Google has announced it will be showing fewer rich results in its search results. As a result, FAQ rich results will be removed across the search result snippets and limiting How-To rich results to desktop devices.
This is a major update for SEO teams and brands across the globe:
📈 Brands might increase in clicks
📉 Brands might lose clicks
This is a huge update!
Google has announced this update will roll out over the next week globally.
Key updates on the HowTo and FAQ rich results in search 🔍
How’s some key points, as an industry we need to think about:
- Google has reduced the visibility of “How To” and FAQ rich results in search results. These are those “juicy” information boxes that show up at the top of search results.
- The industry noticed drops in traffic and engagement from these rich results.
- But…. Google has not provided an official explanation, typical, right? But it seems they are showing fewer of these types of featured snippets.
- Speculation is that Google wants to rely more on its Knowledge Graph and featured snippets from its own properties like YouTube instead of third-party sites.
- This change may lead to more click-throughs to original sites rather than getting answers directly in the featured snippets.
Some site owners are concerned about the loss of traffic from no longer having rich results shown prominently
What to do? 🤔
Of course you may be worrying if you need to strip your FAQ schema etc.
Here’s what John Mueller has said: “Mueller added that sites can remove the structured data, but there’s no need to remove it proactively, as leaving it will not cause any problems for Search.”
Moving forward 💪
The reason is unclear 100% on why they have done this.
For an idea, we can guess this relates to Google’s preferences to showcase its own content in featured snippets.
Would love to get your thoughts on this, ping me an email!
