Changes to Google's FAQ box rolling out

Google's Frequently Asked Questions search component is getting a drastic cut, bad news if you spent an age and fortune crafting your content to suit it. "If you want something that's never going to change, don't work on the internet" says Google's John Mueller.

by Rob Corbidge

Published: 09:28, 09 August 2023

Rob Corbidge is Head of Content Intelligence at Glide Publishing Platform, applying the latest knowledge about advances and ideas in the publishing industry to our own product and helping clients get the most from their content.

Google has announced that to "provide a cleaner and more consistent search experience" the visibility of FAQ rich results in search and also "limiting How-To rich results to desktop devices".

FAQ results will be shown for "well-known, authoritative government and health websites".

Many successful sites have manoeuvred themselves into Google's FAQ section over the past years, and a significant drop in traffic can be expected following this change, which is rolling out as of Tuesday 08 August.

Google's documentation is here.

There were some tense exchanges on Twitter, with Google John Mueller defending the company's actions by saying "If you want something that's never going to change, don't work on the internet"..

Speculation in the search community seems to be around a combination of SEOers gaming the FAQ with too much success, and preparing the grounds for wider adoption of Google's SGE project.