In May 2026, Google quietly removed FAQ rich results from search — the little expandable question-and-answer accordions that used to show up under a listing. A few business owners took that as a signal to rip FAQ sections off their websites. That's the wrong move, and it's worth explaining why.
The problem: a visual feature disappeared, so people assume the substance did too
I've had a couple of Sydney business owners ask me this month whether it's still worth having an FAQ page. Fair question — if the fancy dropdown boxes aren't showing up in Google anymore, what's the point? But this mixes up two different things: how content is displayed in search, and how content is used by the systems reading your site.
Those are no longer the same conversation. Google's classic search results are only half the picture now — AI Overviews, AI Mode, ChatGPT, Perplexity and Google's own AI systems are all reading your website too, and they don't care about accordion widgets. They care about clear, well-structured answers.
Why it's happening now — content structure matters more when AI is the reader
Every AI answer engine works roughly the same way: it scans a page, looks for a direct question paired with a direct, self-contained answer, and decides whether that pairing is trustworthy enough to cite or repeat. A properly built FAQ section — real question, real answer, no fluff before the point — is exactly the shape these systems are looking for. It's one of the highest-performing content formats for getting cited in an AI-generated answer, even with the visual rich result gone from classic search.
Schema markup plays into this too. A lot of business owners think structured data (FAQ schema, LocalBusiness schema, Organization schema) exists purely to win a fancy result in Google. In reality its bigger job in 2026 is proving to AI systems that what's on your page is real, consistent, and worth trusting. If your schema says one thing and your visible page content says something else — or worse, doesn't say it at all — AI systems increasingly skip you rather than risk repeating something wrong.
I see this a lot with trades and local service businesses around Campbelltown, Macarthur and Western Sydney: the schema was set up once, years ago, and the business has changed hours, services or locations since. That mismatch is now actively working against them, not just sitting there unused.
What business owners should do
Three practical things, in order of impact:
1. Keep (or build) a genuine FAQ section. Not ten vague filler questions — the actual things customers ask before booking or buying. Lead every answer with the direct answer in the first sentence, then add detail after.
2. Audit your schema against your actual page content. If your structured data still lists old hours, old services, or an old address, it's actively undermining trust with the systems now reading it. Fix the mismatch before adding anything new.
3. Add trust signals near the content, not just the homepage. Reviews, certifications, real photos of the team and the work — placed near the actual service or product they relate to, not buried on a separate "About" page nobody visits.
Want to Work on This Yourself?
Some business owners would rather understand the mechanics themselves before deciding whether to bring someone in — that's a genuinely sensible way to approach it. If you want a proper step-by-step process for getting your business cited and recommended by ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews and other generative search platforms — including how schema and entity clarity fit into that — I've laid it out in my book GEO Domination: The Step-by-Step Playbook to Mastering Generative SEO.
If it turns out to be more than you want to take on yourself, that's exactly the kind of work I do day to day.
My take
I've been doing this for over 25 years, and I see the same pattern repeat every time Google changes a visible feature: some businesses panic and strip out the thing that changed, and some quietly keep doing the underlying work properly and end up ahead. FAQ content and clean schema were never really about winning a pretty search result — that was just a nice side effect. The real value was always answering real questions clearly enough that something (a person, or now an AI system) can trust the answer and act on it. That hasn't changed at all.
Related reading
If you're working through why enquiries aren't matching your traffic, it's worth reading Why Your Phone Has Stopped Ringing (Even Though Your Website Traffic Looks Fine) next — trust signals and content structure are a big part of that gap.
About me
I'm Peter Karpouzas, and I've got over 25 years of SEO experience — no account managers, no handballing your business to a junior, you deal with me directly. I help Sydney and Macarthur-area businesses, trades, professional services, dentists, lawyers and local service businesses get found on Google, Google Maps and now AI Overviews and ChatGPT. I'm based in Campbelltown/Macarthur and work with businesses across Sydney, Liverpool, Parramatta, Penrith, Western Sydney, South West Sydney, Inner West and Sydney CBD.
If your website's structure, schema or trust signals need a proper look, get in touch via my contact page.
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