Google has tightened its guidelines for FAQ Schema, prohibiting the repetition of questions and answers in multiple FAQ pages on your site. 

What is FAQ schema?

A Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) web page contains a list of questions and answers pertaining to a particular topic. Properly marked up FAQ pages might also be eligible to have a rich end result on Search and Markup Action for the Google Assistant, which can help your website reach the proper users. Here is an example of FAQ rich results:

 

The benefits of using FAQ Schema is that it allows you to compete as a resource to provide answers to certain questions users ask within search. This will attract traffic from users wanting a more in-depth answer as you establish yourself as a key source of instant answers and information. 

What has been announced?

The Google content guidelines state, “If you have FAQ content that is repetitive on your site (meaning, the same question and answer appear on multiple pages on your site), mark up only one instance of that FAQ for your entire site.” This just means that FAQ markups cannot be used more than once per an FAQ page or else you will be in violation of Google’s new guidelines. 

Why is it a problem?

Google’s new guidelines will affect a wide range of sites. These sites include forum pages, as these offer similar answers to a single question. Similar to this would be sites that offer support and product pages as they are at risk of violating the new guidelines as it also provides various answers to a single question. 

What can we do about it?

At this time, the most suitable solution would be to have different FAQs on multiple pages of the site. This will allow for FAQ schema markup to gain traffic to the various pages, provided that the FAQs are eligible for rich results in Search and Markup Action on Google Assist. If the FAQs are the same on multiple pages, the markup would need to be removed to not violate Google’s new guidelines. By not removing the markups, there is a risk that the pages will not show FAQ rich results in the Google search results.  

Why do we care?

By using schema markups it drives organic click-through rates as the schema markup will make the site look better in search and gain the attention of the targeted audience. Schema is important to utilise as it helps search engines understand the content of your web page and makes it more noticeable compared to websites without schemas. Google encourages using markups as they have created an organisational standard which is evidence of how much they want schemas to be utilised.