With questions around quality and a recent dip in prevalence — are FAQs down for the count?
*August 15, 2023 update — after publishing this post, Google announced that FAQs would be changing. We cover that update in our post: The what, when, and why behind the demise of FAQ and How-to.
Whether you’re well-versed in FAQ rich snippets and the FAQPage structured data required to surface them or not, you’ve no doubt seen these little SERP sweethearts at play plenty of times throughout your SEO adventures over the years.
The jury’s still out on whether or not these additional questions and answers pinned underneath organic search results are always helpful, but there’s no denying that their presence is a substantial piece of the current anatomy of the SERP.
Before we explore just where FAQ rich snippets are today, we’ll do a quick refresher on exactly what they’re all about and take a stroll down memory lane for a brief history of this sometimes questionable search result add-on.
What is an FAQ rich result?
In short, FAQ rich results are expandable questions that lie beneath a standard organic result.
FAQ rich snippets on the SERP
When expanded, FAQs can greatly increase the organic footprint of your search results.
The question and answer need to exist in the visible content somewhere on the page (although it’s unclear how rigorously Google actually enforces this when it comes to weeding out fraudulent markup). They need to be marked-up with FAQPage structured data, as with most features like this. And Google suggests that you shouldn’t use the same questions and answers on every page — you should also avoid using user-generated content within your questions and answers.
Of course, at this point, many sites use automated or formulaic questions and answers to provide simple database information, like the dimensions or shipping information for a given product. For example, something like:
Q: What colours is {product} available in?
A: {product} is available in {colour1}, {colour2}, and {colour3}.
(Where the {} are product database references.)
In any case, FAQ rich results represent an opportunity to bulk out your presence on the SERP, increasing the share of visible space occupied by an existing organic result. At the same time, they also offer an enhanced opportunity to entice clicks by addressing user concerns or piquing their interest.
A brief history of FAQs (and their latest fall from grace)
FAQ rich results were officially announced alongside How To and Q&A back in 2018, but probably didn’t arrive explosively onto a SERP near you until 2019 with Google’s adoption of FAQPage structured data.
At the time, many predicted the feature would be short-lived — it seemed just a little too easy to manipulate and trigger, and before long, flimsy FAQ sections were being rapidly added by SEOs to almost any commercial page in mass.
A few months later, Google apparently agreed with this sentiment, and took the step of limiting FAQ rich snippets to three instances per SERP. There were then some reports of minor drops in 2020, possibly related to Google’s clarification that they did not want repeat use of the same questions and answers on a site. Since then, though, things had been relatively quiet on the FAQ snippet front.
This spring FAQ rich results were dropping like flies
FAQ prevalence dropped April 6th on smartphone and May 4th on desktop — and has stayed down since.
That is, until this spring. The above chart shows the total number of FAQ rich results for the 10,000 MozCast keywords, tracked in STAT, with both a desktop vs. mobile and US vs. GB market comparison. We can see striking fall-offs for both, at different times — the smartphone drop is on April 6th, whereas desktop held on a bit longer, before also dropping significantly on May 4th (after quickly recovering from a similar drop at the end of March).
The impact of the drop in FAQ prevalence
We showed you above the very clean and clear drop off in the count of FAQ results. However, there are several other angles to analyze this “new normal” from.
We know, for example, that at one point Google made a decision to stop showing FAQ rich results beyond the first page — perhaps this reflects a similar drive to not show FAQs below high ranking results that might also have other rich snippets like sitelinks or star ratings. That said, as you’ll see below, the eventual stable result impacts every ranking position.
Distribution of FAQs by organic ranking
Comparing before and after, FAQ presence is down for every position in the top 20, and now peaks at position four, instead of three.
In the end, FAQs are now less likely than before to appear at every single ranking position across the board. This suggests a uniform effort by Google to simply be stricter in what they’re willing to accept as a “valid” FAQ rich result worthy of surfacing on the SERP (potentially weeding out some of the more generic or automated FAQs alluded to earlier).
The number of FAQs on the same SERP
The drop in % of SERPs with each frequency of FAQ occurrence seems to match the overall drop in presence.
We can, however, rule out any effort by Google to simply restrict FAQs to one result per SERP. SERPs with multiple FAQ rich results do still exist, and have gone down in frequency roughly as much as FAQs in general have.
A look at FAQ prevalence by vertical
While all verticals are down, notably Travel & Tourism saw the biggest drop of all, losing more than two thirds of their prior count.
It is also the case that no vertical has emerged unscathed, although some have definitely taken bigger hits than others. Most notably, travel and tourism, which back in April had nearly one FAQ rich result per SERP, and has now dropped to just 0.22 per SERP.
Will the fall of FAQs represent the rise of a different result type?
Often in SEO, the demise of one feature, site, or result type can be explained away by the rise of another. However, that does not necessarily seem to be the case here.
With FAQs falling, has another feature risen to take its place?
Not when it comes to other popular rich snippets like ratings, how to, and sitelinks — images, however, seem to be enjoying the newly freed up real estate.
When comparing prevalence to other rich snippet types, none has seen as big of an uptick in popularity to match FAQs’ downfall. That said, we have included images here (although this is not a rich snippet) because it did see a very sizeable uptick following the drop in FAQs. We can’t help but wonder: perhaps this is Google taking advantage of the newly freed up SERP real estate?
So, what does this all mean?
We don’t (exactly) know! But, FAQs have long been criticized as poorly policed and, anecdotally, we know the markup is as often added to pages that have FAQs only for SEO reasons as it is added to pre-existing FAQ sections (as Google originally intended).
Google is always trying to improve its results, often by nudging SEOs to improve the web, and in the case of FAQs, this tactic would appear at a glance to have somewhat backfired and resulted in just the opposite. And so, while we can’t know for sure, we can’t help but wonder if this could be a kind of course correction on their part to try and rein in some of the lower quality and perhaps less “organic” FAQ results out there.
What we’re more sure of is that, even in a reduced capacity, FAQs aren’t likely to disappear entirely any time soon — though as Google’s recently announced Generative Search Experience unfolds, the volatility with this rich result type (and others) are sure to see further shake-ups down the road.
Curious about the FAQs in your search landscape?
To see how FAQ rich results have been impacted in your own keyword set, look no further than the SERP Features dashboard in STAT. Not only will you be able to see the FAQ rich snippets you own, but the total number that are triggered for your entire keyword set (plus, which of your competitors are triggering them).
Not yet in STAT but curious to see how this all works? Shoot us a message — we’d be happy to give you a personalized tour.
