From being used for the first time in 2019 to getting controlled in 2021 and to stopping FAQs altogether for the websites, FAQs have come a long way. Google introduced FAQ schema to make sure that websites of some specific niches such travel ,and education use this schema makeups to show rich results in the SERPs
With time, businesses started abusing FAQ schemas. They started adding too many FAQs in the FAQ schemas, which resulted in SERP results being crowded by these FAQs. So, Google had to control this to ensure a healthy competition among the competitors. For the same, Google rolled out an FAQ update in 2021 and limited the FAQs in FAQ schema to 2.
Now on Aug 7, 2023 Google told the world that it’s not going to show the FAQs in the SERP at all for the majority of the websites for the desktop devices.
Journey of FAQ Schema Markup
In 2019, Google launched FAQ schema markup. FAQ and How to schema markups were launched to enhance user experience in the SERP page. The purpose of FAQ schema markup was to:
- Provide extra information to the Google bots
- To show rich results in the SERP page to the users to help them in making a decision
But, just like any other development in the world, FAQ schema markup was also abused by the webmasters. They started adding as many FAQs they can in the FAQ schema markup. As a result, the SERP page got crowded with the FAQs results only. A specific website with more than 2 FAQs started dominating the results.
How did Google Solve This Issue?
In June 2021, Google launched a FAQ review update. In this update, Google said that it will not be showing more than 2 results in the SERP. This is how Google restricted FAQs on the SERP page to ensure fair competition.
Latest Update on FAQ and How to Schema?
On august 9, 2023 Google announced that its going to limit the visibility of FAQs and How to rich results in the SERP page. Additionally, Google announced that these changes will be applicable for the desktop devices. This update will complete the rollout by Aug 16, 2023.
Once the rollout is complete these FAQs and How to results will only be shown for high authoritative government websites and high authoritative websites in the health niche. Other websites shall have to cross some eligibility criteria to show FAQs and How to in the SERP.
Why Google Took This Decision?
There can be certain possible reasons for doing this. These can be:
- As Google has limited these changes to desktop devices, maybe Desktop results were getting crowded. Assume that if two websites have implemented FAQs schema and both are showing FAQs in the SERP. In that case both will be showing 2-2 FAQs each. This will make the SERP page crowded. This is the reason Google limited the FAQs to 2 for the websites
- Pagination is implemented for Desktop devices, but mobile devices still have infinite scroll for the SERP page. So, in that case to ensure better competition Google had to limit this change to Desktop devices
- Google limited these changes to websites other than government and authoritative health related websites. Maybe Google wants websites to gain the authority first and then use FAQ schema to show FAQ in the SERP
- Everyone knows Google shows 10 results on the SERP page. Now, when more than 1 website is showing FAQs in the SERP(4 FAQ results), which ensures websites ranking at lower ranks will be getting lesser number of visitors organically than they should have gotten with a fair competition