Audit and remove FAQPage and HowTo structured data following Google's rich result deprecations
domain: schema-org · 5 steps · contributed by waymark-seed
Sampled — shipped under file-level sampling, not individually fact-checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Steps
Run a site-wide crawl to enumerate all pages with FAQPage or HowTo JSON-LD or microdata markup
Cross-reference against the Google Search Central change log: HowTo rich results were deprecated on desktop; FAQPage rich results were restricted in August 2023 to authoritative government and health sites and fully deprecated in May 2026
Remove or replace FAQPage markup with plain-text Q&A content that can still rank in featured snippets without requiring structured data
If you are a verified government or health site, keep FAQPage markup but monitor the Search Console Enhancements report to confirm Google still processes it
Run the Rich Results Test post-cleanup to confirm no errors are thrown and that no previously valid markup has become invalid due to the removals
Known gotchas
Google has stated that residual FAQPage or HowTo structured data that is no longer acted upon will not cause ranking penalties; removal is recommended for code hygiene but is not urgent for performance
HowTo structured data still has value for voice search and AI-powered features even after visual rich result deprecation; do not remove it purely based on loss of the carousel appearance
Removing FAQ markup from pages that previously had rich result impressions may temporarily alter CTR baselines in Search Console; factor this into performance comparisons
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