Changes to HowTo and FAQ rich results

Tuesday, August 8, 2023

To provide a cleaner and more consistent search experience, we're changing how some rich results types are shown in Google's search results. In particular, we're reducing the visibility of FAQ rich results, and limiting How-To rich results to desktop devices. This change should finish rolling out globally within the next week.

Overview of the changes

For site owners, these changes primarily affect the use of FAQ and How-To structured data.

Going forward, FAQ (from FAQPage structured data) rich results will only be shown for well-known, authoritative government and health websites. For all other sites, this rich result will no longer be shown regularly. Sites may automatically be considered for this treatment depending on their eligibility.

While you can drop this structured data from your site, there's no need to proactively remove it. Structured data that's not being used does not cause problems for Search, but also has no visible effects in Google Search.

A search result showing a full FAQ rich result, and one without

How-To (from HowTo