3 Reasons why your FAQ Schema won’t Show In Google Search

Gone are the days when people wouldn’t pay attention to the FAQs because of their low ranking potential. The FAQ section often consists of the content that you couldn’t squeeze into your blogs. But what if we tell you these pages have the potential to affect your search engine ranking?

There’s no denying that FAQ pages hardly rank on the first page of the search results, let alone get featured in snippets. If somebody visits the FAQ section, it’s probably because they navigated to these pages through your website. That’s because FAQ pages are totally opposite of what Google has described as ideal content. Despite offering useful information, these pages don’t get listed in the search results. 

Recently, a website owner asked why Google search results do not show web pages that have FAQ schema implemented. If the pages do not show any technical error in the search console, how come they are never part of search results?

Is it because of a non-technical cause? What could it be? Responding to these questions, John Mueller — Google’s Search Advocate — suggested three possible reasons your FAQ schema doesn’t rank in the search engines. Though possibilities are endless, here are three things that might be causing the issues. We have also mentioned the solutions for fixing the problem. 

Three main reasons why Google isn’t showing your FAQ pages in a search result:

1. There is an error in the FAQ schema markup from a technical standpoint
2. The FAQ page doesn’t comply with Google’s policies
3. Google isn’t convinced about the quality of your content 

Note: For an FAQ page to be ranked on Google, it must meet the following conditions.

• Technically Correct

First things first, you need to check if the FAQ schema is implemented correctly. You can find this information in the Search Console. It will tell if you have applied the schema markup as required on a technical level. 

Even a small technical error in your webpage can affect its search engine ranking. Technical errors make it difficult for the search bots to crawl your web pages for indexing. The same goes for FAQ markup. If the search console doesn’t detect any problem, there could be another problem. Here’s what else might be causing the issue.

• Policy Compliance

If your FAQ schema is technically correct, the problem must be the lack of compliance. Google has a set of data policies that every website owner is supposed to comply with to get their website ranked in the search engine. Fortunately, with FAQ pages, Google’s ranking policy is as simple as ensuring that these pages are visible. Put it this way, you only need to ensure that your questions and answers can be seen on your website when a user navigates to this section. So, make sure the content you upload on these pages is visible and easy to interpret.

Read Also:- 5 Reasons Why Your Rich Snippets are not Showing search results

• Trustworthiness

Let’s say you have checked the technical and compliance aspects of your content, and everything is in line with Google’s policy. This leads us to the question — does your content offer value to your readers, or does Google trust your content?

Google has started prioritizing content quality over other things. For your content to rank on top of the search results, it must be informative and engaging. Most importantly, the information you upload should be well-researched and 100% authentic. If your FAQs schema markup doesn’t show up in the Google search results, it is probably because of the poor quality content. Perhaps, the quality is good, but Google doesn’t trust your website content, or it isn’t convinced that the information on your FAQ pages offers value to users.

If that’s the case, Google will never show your content in the search engine. So, the best thing you can do here is to check if your content is correct on a technical level. If that’s alright, see if it complies with Google’s ranking policy. This will give you a clear picture of why your FAQ pages are now showing up in the search result. It’s most likely because of the content quality. As we have mentioned before, ranking FAQ pages is relatively difficult compared to other pages of your website. 

These pages don’t focus on one niche; instead, they feature a bunch of questions. Google needs you to put detailed content on topics relevant to your niche or the products and services you offer. Since FAQs are absolutely different from that, they don’t rank as high as other pages on Google. Unfortunately, there is nothing you can do about it. Just check the quality of the content, see if the pages are visible and if each question is answered correctly and in detail. This might help you with ranking.