Part 2: What Google’s latest update means for your structured data strategy
This is the second in our short series on Google’s evolving relationship with structured data and how it affects SEO teams, marketing reporting, and AI discoverability.
If you missed part one, check it out here:
Google Removes Support for Several Structured Data Types - What SEO Teams Need to Know
In it, we explored how Google has dropped support for several structured data types - including Event and Dataset markup - and why structured content still matters in a search ecosystem increasingly shaped by AI.
This week, we’re digging into another update: changes to FAQ and How-To structured data.
What’s changed?
In short: Google is no longer showing FAQ and How-To rich results for most websites.
FAQ rich results will now only appear for a limited group of authoritative government and health websites.
How-To rich results will be limited to desktop users only, and only when markup is implemented correctly
This means most websites - even with valid schema - won’t see these formats showing up in Google search anymore.
Just like the previous structured data changes, this isn’t a signal to stop using schema altogether. Instead, it’s a good time to review what you’ve got, why it’s there, and whether it still delivers value.
Why it still matters (even if Google hides it)
As we said in Part 1 - Google drops support for some schema types, structured data isn’t just about rich results - it’s about clarity. For AI, for Bing, for enterprise tools, and for any system that needs to understand what your content means, not just what it says.
Schema continues to play a key role in:
- Making content machine-readable and AI-ready
- Helping your site stay futureproof for evolving search formats
- Powering discoverability across platforms (beyond just Google)
So while these changes limit some short-term visibility in Google’s SERPs, the long-term benefits remain strong.
Where different schema types belong
One practical outcome of these changes is that teams need to be more deliberate about which schema goes where. Instead of adding markup everywhere and hoping for a rich result, it is worth mapping schema to page types in a simple, predictable way.
A few useful rules of thumb.
Homepage
- Use Organization schema to describe who you are, including your name, URL, logo, social profiles, and key contact details.
Location pages
- Use LocalBusiness where there is a real physical address and contact information for that specific location.
Blog listing and articles
- Use Blog for the main listing page, and Article on individual posts, with a clear headline, author and dates.
Service and product content
- Use Service on service landing pages, and Product on product detail pages. Product can be combined with BreadcrumbList where breadcrumb navigation is visible.
FAQ content
- Full, dedicated FAQ pages are a good fit for FAQPage schema.
- For landing pages with a small number of questions, light use of FAQ markup is still fine, as long as the questions and answers are genuinely helpful and visible on the page.
Event and other specialised content
Use Event, Course, VideoObject, JobPosting and similar types on pages that clearly match those patterns. Even where Google has reduced support for some of these, they still help other platforms interpret the content correctly.
Across all of these, the key is alignment. Schema should describe what is already there, not invent or exaggerate content that does not exist on the page.
What SEO and content teams should do next
We should audit FAQ and How-To schema across all active sites to make sure it’s still valid, relevant, and genuinely tied to what’s actually present on the page.
At the same time, we’ll need to update expectations and internal documentation. Any reporting templates, roadmaps, or SEO deliverables that previously treated FAQ/How-To schema as a guaranteed visibility tactic in Google should be adjusted accordingly.
Ultimately, schema decisions should be based on clarity and usefulness, not on whether Google chooses to display it. If the markup helps machines understand the page better, it’s worth keeping. If it was added purely for visual SERP appeal and no longer serves a broader purpose, then simplifying it may be the right call.
Final thoughts
This second Google update follows the same pattern we highlighted in Part 1: Google is continuing to remove support for several structured data types, and SEO teams need to adjust accordingly.
At this point, it’s becoming less about chasing rich results, and more about building content that’s genuinely understandable, interoperable across platforms, and ready for AI-driven discovery.
So what’s the right approach?
- Google-aware, but not Google-only
- Focused on clarity rather than visibility
- Rooted in long-term SEO value, not short-term feature chasing
If your current schema strategy is still centred around “what triggers a rich result,” it may be time to shift the focus - and we’re here to help you make that transition smoothly.