KhaqanWhat is FAQPage schema?
FAQPage schema is a schema.org structured data type that marks up a page's questions and answers as a list of Question items, each with an acceptedAnswer, so search engines and AI assistants can identify the exact answer text to a specific question.
In JSON-LD, an FAQPage has a mainEntity array; each element is a Question with a name (the question text) and an acceptedAnswer of type Answer whose text property holds the answer. The questions and answers must also appear visibly on the page, in the same wording, because the markup describes the page rather than replacing it.
Its status has changed. From 2019 Google showed FAQ rich results, the expandable question list under a search listing, for any site that used the markup, and it became a tactic. In August 2023 Google restricted those rich results to well-known, authoritative government and health sites, so for a typical business the visual reward in Google is gone. What remains is the machine-readable value: the markup tells any parser, including the retrieval systems behind AI assistants, precisely which sentence answers which question. That is why an answer-engine audit still checks for it.
A useful example is a services page with five real questions customers ask by phone: what areas do you cover, how quickly can you attend, what does a callout cost, do you work weekends, and how do I pay. Answer each in two or three plain sentences on the page, then mirror them exactly in the FAQPage block.
The common mistake is inventing questions nobody asks in order to have more markup, or marking up a page as an FAQ when it is really an article with one question in it. Another is letting the visible text and the JSON-LD drift apart after an edit, so the page says one price and the schema says another; a contradiction like that is worse than no markup at all.
Related terms
- JSON-LD structured data: JSON-LD structured data is a block of JSON, placed in a script tag with type application/ld+json, that describes a page's content using schema.org vocabulary (organisation, article, product, FAQ) so search engines and AI systems can read the facts without parsing the visible HTML.
- AEO (answer engine optimisation): Answer engine optimisation (AEO) is the practice of structuring web content so that answer engines, meaning AI assistants, voice assistants and featured snippets, can extract a direct, accurate answer to a question and attribute it to your site.
- speakable schema: Speakable schema is a schema.org property (speakable, with a SpeakableSpecification) that points, using CSS selectors or XPath, to the sections of a page best suited to being read aloud by a voice assistant, typically the headline and a short summary.