FAQ Schema After the May 2026 Deprecation

The deprecation matters for AI Overviews because the rich result was the most visible reason owners installed FAQPage schema in the first place. With the visible benefit gone for most sites, the calculation becomes: is the markup worth the maintenance burden? On a dedicated FAQ page where the schema accurately reflects visible content, the answer is yes — the structured signal helps Google's understanding layer and aligns the page with what AI engines parse for Q&A retrieval. Everywhere else, the markup is now liability surface without offsetting benefit.

Google did not publish a blog post explaining the deprecation. The change appeared in the canonical FAQ documentation¹ and was picked up by Search Engine Journal² and other secondary coverage. The shift completes a narrowing that began in August 2023, when Google sharply reduced FAQ rich result visibility for non-authoritative sites. The 2023 change effectively reserved the feature for government and health; the 2026 change removed the visible result entirely for everyone else.

The rule is conservative on purpose. Pre-2026, FAQ schema on service pages was a low-effort way to claim more SERP real estate — the FAQ rich result could double the visible footprint of a result card. That benefit is gone for non-authoritative sites. The remaining benefit — possible influence on AIO citation selection — is unverified by any canonical source. Until a Google announcement names FAQ schema as an AIO weighting signal, treat the markup as having zero AIO upside on non-FAQ-primary pages.

A second narrow case: an FAQ-primary subdirectory on a documentation-heavy site (typically /help/ or /support/ on a software business's Squarespace marketing site). The same test applies — if the page is structured around Q&A as its primary content, keep the schema. The rule is "the schema describes the page accurately," not "the page contains some questions."

On Squarespace, FAQ JSON-LD typically lives in one of two places: Page Settings → Advanced → Code Injection → Header (per-page), or Settings → Advanced → Code Injection → Header (site-wide). The site-wide variant is the one that produces the most cleanup work, because a single template-level snippet emits FAQPage markup on every page that imports the template. Audit the site-wide injection first; per-page removals come second.

An automated audit helps: view source on three representative pages (service, blog post, product) and find-on-page for "@type": "FAQPage". If the markup appears on a page that is not FAQ-primary, that page needs the removal pass. Plan thirty minutes for a typical Squarespace site — less if all FAQ schema lives in a single Code Injection snippet.

Google's documentation¹ is explicit on the visibility requirement: "All FAQ content must be visible to users on the source page." A schema block describing questions that are not visible — for instance, in a closed accordion that requires interaction — technically violates the structured data policy. Squarespace's accordion block usually renders accordion content into the DOM (just visually collapsed), which keeps the markup compliant, but verify by viewing source.

 <script type="application/ld+json"> { "@context": "https://schema.org", "@type": "FAQPage", "mainEntity": [ { "@type": "Question", "name": "Does Squarespace support llms.txt natively?", "acceptedAnswer": { "@type": "Answer", "text": "Not at the root. The workaround is URL Mappings: create a Squarespace page at slug /llms, then add a 301 redirect /llms.txt -> /llms." } }, { "@type": "Question", "name": "Should I keep FAQ schema on service pages in 2026?", "acceptedAnswer": { "@type": "Answer", "text": "No. Keep it only on dedicated FAQ pages where Q&A is the primary content." } } ] } </script> 

Squarespace's Code Injection lives behind the Business plan paywall (Core plan and above). On Personal plan, FAQPage JSON-LD is not installable inside Squarespace — the workaround is either a plan upgrade or accepting that the structured layer cannot be patched. The visible Q&A content still works without schema; it is only the structured annotation that requires the paid tier.

A common Squarespace-specific error: duplicate FAQ schema. Squarespace's auto-emitted JSON-LD on some templates already includes basic FAQ markup; adding a manual JSON-LD block on top produces two FAQPage blocks for the same page, which Google's validator flags as a structured-data error. The fix is either to remove the template-level injection or to ensure the manual block does not duplicate the same questions. View source and find-on-page for "@type": "FAQPage"; expect exactly one match per page.