Schema markup in 2026: what still works after FAQ rich results

Schema markup is code that describes what a page contains in a shared vocabulary that search engines read, usually written as a block of JSON-LD in the page's HTML. For years, small-business sites added it on plugin advice, mostly to win star ratings, FAQ drop-downs and how-to steps in Google's results. Several of those rewards are now gone. According to Google's documentation changelog, FAQ rich results no longer appear in Google Search from 7 May 2026, HowTo results went in 2023, and six more types were retired in 2025.

That does not make schema pointless. Product, review, event, video and organisation markup still feed live Google features, and accurate markup still removes guesswork about who you are and what you sell. What has changed is which types deserve your time, and how much weight to give the claim that schema boosts AI answers. The 2026 evidence does not support it.

Who this is for: small-business owners, in-house marketers, and WordPress, Shopify and freelance developers who added schema in the past and want to know what still matters. What you'll be able to do: see which types still earn a Google feature, weigh the evidence on schema and AI search, add a short core set of JSON-LD, and decide for each block you already have whether to keep, fix or remove it.

What schema markup does in 2026, and what it never did

Schema markup does two useful things in 2026: it makes a page eligible for the Google features that still exist, and it states facts such as your business name, address, prices and returns policy in a form machines cannot misread. It has never guaranteed a rich result, and Google's documentation presents it as a route to eligibility, not as a ranking boost.

The vocabulary comes from schema.org, which defines types (Organization, Product, Event) and their properties (name, price, startDate). Google's list of supported structured data features accepts three formats, JSON-LD, Microdata and RDFa, and recommends JSON-LD. JSON-LD sits in one script block, separate from your visible layout, so it is the easiest format to add, read and maintain.

Three jobs, in order of value

1. Feature eligibility. Google's general structured data guidelines say markup enables a feature but does not guarantee it. Google's systems may still show a plain result instead.
2. Unambiguous facts. Google's Organization markup documentation says adding it to your home page can help Google understand your organisation's administrative details and disambiguate it in search results. For shops, price, availability, shipping and returns data is read directly from markup.
3. Consistency. When your markup, your page text and your listings agree, every system that reads your site gets the same answer. When they disagree, you create the confusion you were trying to remove.

What it never did

Markup does not make a thin page helpful, does not replace a well-kept Google Business Profile and cannot force a feature to appear. When Google announced the retirement of seven rich result types in June 2025, it said the change would not affect how pages rank: rich results change how a listing looks, not where it sits. Plugins, themes and guides written before 2026 may still present FAQ markup as a way to win extra space, so treat any tool's default output as something to check, not a decision already made.

Retired and limited rich results: a 2023–2026 timeline

Google has removed or narrowed more than ten rich result features since August 2023, and the removals follow the same pattern. The feature disappears from results first, then Search Console reports and Rich Results Test support go, then API support ends. Google has repeatedly said that leftover markup causes no problems.

• 8 August 2023: Google limited FAQ rich results to well-known, authoritative government and health websites, and limited HowTo rich results to desktop.
• 13 September 2023: HowTo rich results stopped showing on desktop as well, which ended the type. Google said there was no need to proactively remove the markup, because unused structured data does not cause problems for Search.
• November 2024: The sitelinks search box was removed from results, and the changelog records its documentation being removed on 29 November because the feature is no longer available in Google Search.
• January 2025: Google stopped showing breadcrumbs in mobile results in all languages and regions, where the visible URL now shows only the domain. Breadcrumb markup remains supported for desktop results.
• 12 June 2025: Google announced it would phase out Book Actions, Course Info, ClaimReview, Estimated Salary, Learning Video, Special Announcement and Vehicle Listing because they were rarely used. From 9 September 2025, six of them left Search Console reports and the Rich Results Test.
• November 2025: In a second simplification update, Google said it was phasing out more lesser-used features and would remove Search Console and API support for the affected structured data types from January 2026. Practice problem markup went (its documentation was removed on 6 January 2026), dataset markup was clarified as used only by Dataset Search, and Book Actions was reprieved because a Search feature still uses it.
• 7 May 2026: FAQ rich results stopped appearing for every site, including the government and health sites that kept them after 2023. Search Engine Journal reported that the FAQ search appearance, report and Rich Results Test support were due to go in June 2026, and Search Console API support in August 2026. Google published no blog post explaining the change, and removed the FAQ documentation in June 2026.

What the pattern tells you

First, removals hit presentation, not markup. Google said in 2023 that unused structured data causes no problems, and Search Engine Journal's report on the FAQ change says the same of FAQ markup. Nothing breaks if you leave accurate retired markup in place.

Second, how widely a type is used offers no protection, so choose markup for the features Google documents today.

Third, expect more change. Google framed its November 2025 post as an update on continuing efforts to simplify the results page, so check the changelog every quarter rather than assuming today's list is permanent.

Status table: which schema types still earn a Google feature

As of October 2026, Google still documents a visible feature for about two dozen structured data types, including Product, Review snippet, Event, Video, Recipe, Job posting, Article, Organization, Local business and Breadcrumb. FAQPage, HowTo and the 2025 retirees earn nothing visible in Google Search (checked October 2026).

How we built this table: in October 2026 we compared Google's search gallery with the structured data entries in its documentation changelog and the announcement posts from August 2023 to June 2026. We then sorted the types small-business sites most often carry into four groups: earns a feature, earns a limited feature, no Google feature, and retired. You can repeat the check in about ten minutes, because both pages are public.

How to read the table

"Earns a feature" means the page becomes eligible, not that the feature will appear: Google picks the presentation for each search. "Retired" does not mean harmful. Accurate retired markup does no damage, so removing it is housekeeping. The rows that need action are the ones where markup could mislead, which the audit section covers.

Two rows deserve a note. Q&A markup describes a page built around one question followed by its answers, such as a forum thread, so switching a business FAQ list to Q&A markup to get the old drop-down back misuses the type. And the review snippet row comes with a firm rule: Google's review snippet documentation says pages using LocalBusiness or Organization markup are ineligible for stars when the business controls the reviews about itself, including reviews shown through an embedded widget.

Does schema help AI Overviews, AI Mode and ChatGPT? The evidence

On current evidence, adding schema markup does not measurably increase how often AI answers cite a page. Google says no special schema is needed for its generative AI features, and a controlled test of 1,885 pages, published by Ahrefs in 2026, found no statistically significant citation lift in ChatGPT or AI Mode.

The opposite claim, that schema "gets you into AI answers", usually rests on correlation: cited pages are more likely to carry markup. That cannot separate cause from effect, because well-run sites tend to have both markup and the content AI answers quote. Here is the direct evidence.

What the Ahrefs test does and does not show

In its 2026 study, Ahrefs matched each page that added JSON-LD with three control pages from other domains that had similar citation levels and never added it, then compared the change across AI Overviews, AI Mode and ChatGPT. The AI Overviews decline was real but unexplained, because both groups were already falling before the markup went in.

The limits matter. Every page in the dataset already had more than 100 AI Overview citations before the change, so the study says nothing about pages AI systems do not cite yet. The window was 30 days, schema types were pooled together, and other edits may have happened at the same time. Read it as good evidence that schema is not a citation switch for already-visible pages, not as proof that schema can never help.

Why the result makes sense

Google's guide to optimising for generative AI features is explicit that no special schema.org markup is needed, while still recommending structured data as part of normal SEO. AI answers are written from passages of text, and a small experiment by searchVIU in October 2025 put product prices only in JSON-LD, only in JavaScript-inserted markup or only in RDFa, then asked five AI systems, including ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity and Gemini, about them. The systems relied on visible HTML. It is one page on one day, but it fits the Ahrefs result.

The practical reading: the sentence an AI answer quotes comes from your visible copy. Markup may still help Google understand your organisation and products, which is why Google keeps recommending it, but no published test shows it decides whether you are cited.

What to do with this

• If your goal is AI citations, put direct answers, specific facts and sources in the visible text, and make sure the right crawlers can reach the page. Our guide to getting cited in AI search covers the full method, and our post on how ChatGPT recommends businesses explains the local angle.
• If your goal is a rich result, use the status table above and add only the types with a live feature.
• If your goal is accurate brand facts in answers, keep your markup, page text and listings identical. Consistency is the benefit, not the markup itself.
• If you want to test a schema change yourself, change one template, leave a comparable set of pages alone, and watch both in Search Console's generative AI performance report for at least a month.

Be sceptical of plugins, add-ons or retainers that sell schema as an "AI citation" product. The best evidence available in 2026 does not back that promise.

The core schema set for a small business website

Most small businesses need four kinds of markup: Organization with a logo and sameAs links on the home page, a LocalBusiness subtype on each location page, BreadcrumbList across the site, and Article or BlogPosting on posts. Add Event, VideoObject or Product only when a page genuinely contains those things.

1. Organization with sameAs

Put one Organization block on your home page. Include your name, URL and logo, and use sameAs to list your official profiles. Google's Organization documentation says sameAs can hold several URLs, such as your social and review profiles. A minimal pattern looks like this:

{"@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "Organization", "name": "Example Ltd", "url": "https://example.com/", "logo": "https://example.com/logo.png", "sameAs": ["https://www.linkedin.com/company/example", "https://www.facebook.com/example"]}

Only list profiles you control and keep up to date. A sameAs link to an abandoned page tells machines that page is you. The free Brand Knowledge Graph Builder reads your home page and key pages, shows the services, places, people and profiles a machine can connect to your brand, and outputs Organization markup with those links. Look at its list of missing connections before you copy the code.

2. LocalBusiness on each location page

Use the most specific subtype that fits, such as Dentist, Plumber or Restaurant, rather than plain LocalBusiness. Google's LocalBusiness documentation lists name and address as required, asks for latitude and longitude to at least five decimal places, and wants a primary phone number with country and area codes. Example: a dental clinic in Pune might use:

{"@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "Dentist", "name": "Example Dental Clinic", "url": "https://example.com/pune/", "telephone": "+91-20-0000-0000", "address": {"@type": "PostalAddress", "streetAddress": "1 Example Road", "addressLocality": "Pune", "postalCode": "411001", "addressCountry": "IN"}}

Your Google Business Profile, not your markup, is where you manage how your business appears in Maps and the local knowledge panel. So treat LocalBusiness markup as a mirror of your verified profile: same name, same address, same phone, same hours. Our Google Business Profile optimisation guide covers the profile side, and our guide to local SEO for AI search explains how both feed local AI answers.

3. BreadcrumbList across the site

Breadcrumb markup describes where a page sits in your site structure. It only shows on desktop results now, but it costs little once it is in your template. A two-level example:

{"@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "BreadcrumbList", "itemListElement": [{"@type": "ListItem", "position": 1, "name": "Services", "item": "https://example.com/services/"}, {"@type": "ListItem", "position": 2, "name": "Dental implants", "item": "https://example.com/services/implants/"}]}

4. Article or BlogPosting on posts

Google's gallery says Article markup can feed article results with the headline and larger-than-thumbnail images. Fill in the headline, main image, published and modified dates, and the author with a link to their profile page, and show the same dates and byline on the page itself:

{"@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "BlogPosting", "headline": "How long do dental implants last?", "datePublished": "2026-09-02", "dateModified": "2026-10-10", "author": {"@type": "Person", "name": "Dr A. Example", "url": "https://example.com/team/a-example/"}}

Only change dateModified when the content really changes. The on-page basics that sit alongside this, such as titles, headings and internal links, are in our on-page SEO checklist.

Which markup for which kind of business

Restaurants have their own profile details to get right before any markup, which our post on Google Business Profile for restaurants walks through. To write the JSON-LD itself, the free Schema Markup Generator builds LocalBusiness, Organization, Product, Event, Article and Breadcrumb markup from a form and flags missing fields as you go. It also offers FAQPage and HowTo; use those only if the questions or steps are visible on the page and you accept that they earn no Google feature now.

Ecommerce: product, merchant listing, shipping and returns markup

Product markup with an Offer has the clearest remaining payoff of any schema type. On pages where customers buy from you, use merchant listing markup with a price above zero and a currency, and describe shipping and returns once for the whole shop instead of on every product.

Merchant listing or product snippet?

Google's merchant listing documentation draws the line by what the page does. Merchant listings are for pages where a shopper can buy the product from you, not pages that link to other sellers. Product snippets cover a wider set of pages, including product reviews and pages that aggregate information from other sites.

• Merchant listings need an Offer, not an AggregateOffer, because you must be the seller.
• The price must be greater than zero, and priceCurrency is required whenever you give a price, as a three-letter code such as GBP, INR or USD.
• If you include the properties merchant listings require, the same page can also qualify for product snippets, so you do not need two blocks.

A minimal product page pattern:

{"@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "Product", "name": "Oak chopping board", "image": "https://example.com/board.jpg", "offers": {"@type": "Offer", "price": "34.00", "priceCurrency": "GBP", "availability": "https://schema.org/InStock"}}

Shipping and returns, set once

In November 2025 Google added more ways to share shipping and returns policies: you can describe them in Search Console or with organisation-level structured data, even without a Merchant Center account. One site-wide shipping policy can replace shipping markup on every product. In markup, the return policy sits inside your Organization block as "hasMerchantReturnPolicy": {"@type": "MerchantReturnPolicy", …} and the shipping policy as "hasShippingService": {"@type": "ShippingService", …}. Keep product-level shipping or returns markup only for items with different terms.

Checks that save problems later

1. Match the visible price. The price and currency in markup should equal what the shopper sees, including sale prices.
2. Update availability. Out-of-stock products should say so in markup at the same time as on the page.
3. Check for duplicates. Shopify themes, WordPress plugins and review apps can each output their own Product block. Keep one source of truth.
4. Prefer server-rendered markup. Markup in the HTML your server sends is easier to test and does not depend on scripts running after the page loads.

Keep, fix or remove: auditing the schema you already have

Audit by template, not page by page: list the markup each template outputs, test it, compare every value with what the page shows, then decide. Keep accurate markup for live features, fix errors and mismatches, and remove markup that describes things visitors cannot see or reviews you control.

The audit in six steps

1. List your templates. Most small sites have five or six: home, location, service, post, product and contact. Run the free Website SEO Audit to crawl up to 50 pages the way a search engine does; its issue list flags pages with missing structured data, which shows you where templates output nothing.
2. Test one URL per template. Use Google's Rich Results Test to see which Google features the markup is eligible for and any errors, and the Schema Markup Validator at validator.schema.org to check general schema.org validity, including types Google does not use.
3. Compare each value with the visible page. Name, phone, address, opening hours, price, rating, questions and answers: if a value is in the markup, it should be on the page and identical.
4. Look for duplicates. View the page source and search for application/ld+json. Two Organization or Product blocks with different values usually means a theme and a plugin both output markup.
5. Check facts against your listings. The free AI Answer Consistency Checker reads your pages, including footers and structured data, and lists conflicting phone numbers, cities, postcodes and other brand facts. Fix the source of each conflict, then update your profiles to match.
6. Decide, change the template, retest. Use the table below, make the change once in the template or plugin setting, and run the same URLs through the tests again.

Decision table: keep, fix or remove

What to do with FAQ markup

If your FAQs answer questions customers really ask, keep them on the page, because a clear answer helps readers whether or not Google shows a drop-down. The markup behind them can stay or go: Google said in 2023 that unused structured data causes no problems. Stop adding FAQ sections mainly to win a rich result. If you are rewriting FAQs for readers, the free AI-Friendly FAQ Generator suggests questions a page is missing and scores draft answers as you type, aiming for 40 to 60 words that open with the point. The visible answer is what matters; copying its FAQPage markup is optional.

Worked example (hypothetical)

Example: a physiotherapy clinic in Leeds runs WordPress with an SEO plugin and a reviews widget. The audit finds four things. The home page has an Organization block with a sameAs link to a Twitter account closed in 2023. Every service page has FAQPage markup from the plugin's FAQ block, and the questions are visible. The location page outputs LocalBusiness with an AggregateRating fed by the clinic's own reviews widget. And the theme adds a second LocalBusiness block with the old phone number.

The decisions follow the table. Remove the dead sameAs link and add the clinic's current profiles. Leave the visible FAQs and their markup, and stop adding new FAQ blocks for search reasons. Remove the AggregateRating, because a business marking up reviews it controls is ineligible for stars. Switch off the theme's LocalBusiness output so only one block remains, with the current number, then fix the same number on the Business Profile and directories. Total effort: about an hour, mostly in the theme and plugin settings.

Testing and monitoring with the Rich Results Test and Search Console

Use the Rich Results Test before you publish, Search Console's rich result reports to watch markup across the whole site, and the Manual Actions report to make sure nothing has gone wrong. Each answers a different question, so use all three.

{
  "@type": "ProfessionalService",
  "name": "Your Brand",
  "areaServed": "Pune",
  "hasOfferCatalog": {
    "itemListElement": ["SEO audit", "Content"]
  },
  "aggregateRating": { "ratingValue": 4.9 }
}

Before you publish

Run each changed template through the Rich Results Test, which checks a live URL or pasted code and shows which Google features it qualifies for. Errors disqualify the page from that feature; warnings flag optional properties. Use the Schema Markup Validator for types Google has no feature for, such as Service. Then view the source to confirm the JSON-LD is in the HTML your server sends, once per entity.

After you publish

• Rich result reports. Search Console shows a report for each supported feature it finds on your site, such as product snippets, merchant listings, breadcrumbs and videos, with valid and invalid items. Check them monthly and after every theme, plugin or template change.
• Expect retired reports to vanish. The FAQ report and Rich Results Test support were due to go in June 2026, and the Search Console API support in August 2026. A missing FAQ report means the feature has gone, not that your site has a problem.
• Manual Actions report. Google's general guidelines say a structured data manual action removes a page's eligibility for rich results without changing how it ranks in web search. Check this report whenever rich results disappear across the whole site at once.

No report shows whether markup changes AI answers, so treat any movement in AI visibility as one signal among many. Schema checks also belong in your wider audit routine: our technical SEO audit checklist places them alongside crawling, indexing and speed.

Schema mistakes that waste effort or risk manual actions

The costly mistakes are marking up content visitors cannot see, putting review stars on your own business, and letting markup contradict the page. Google's guidelines say quality violations can stop correct markup from showing as a rich result, or get it treated as spam.

1. Marking up invisible content. Google's general guidelines say the markup must describe the same thing the page body describes. FAQs, ratings, prices or opening hours that exist only in JSON-LD break that rule.
2. Stars on your own business. AggregateRating on your LocalBusiness or Organization, fed by testimonials or an embedded review widget, is ineligible. Put the effort into earning genuine Google reviews instead.
3. Letting facts go stale. A move, a new phone number or a price rise has to reach the markup the same day it reaches the page. Hard-coded JSON-LD pasted into a page builder is easy to forget when details change.
4. Running duplicate generators. A theme, an SEO plugin and a reviews app can each output markup. Pick one source per entity and switch the others off.
5. Trusting generated markup unchecked. If an AI tool or plugin writes your JSON-LD, check every value against the page. Invented ratings, prices or opening hours are exactly what the visible-content rule forbids.

If you receive a structured data manual action, the affected markup is ignored and the pages lose rich result eligibility, though they still appear in results. Fix every instance across the site, then request a review in the Manual Actions report.

Your schema plan for the next hour

Work in this order: remove anything risky, fix what is wrong, add the core set, then set a reminder to review it every quarter. Most small sites can finish the first three rows in one sitting.

Schema markup in 2026 is less about collecting rich results and more about stating a small number of facts accurately in the places that still use them. Keep the set short, keep it identical to the page, and put the words you want quoted by AI answers where readers can see them.

If you would rather have structured data audited and implemented as part of a wider technical review, that is part of our technical SEO service. When you want to talk through your site, contact us.