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There has been chatter recently, with some data backing it up from the data tool provider RankRanger, that Google has stopped showing a nice percentage of rich results and how-to / FAQ schema rich results in the search results.
Here is the RankRanger chart from its SERP features:
- Rich results from June 20th was at about 25% of the search results and now it is down to 14.6% of results
- How to and FAQ results from June 20th was at about 19% of the search results and now it is down to 13% of the results
The chatter is also there, here are some tweets:
Seeing some people say that their FAQ markup is not as likely to give them FAQs in the SERPS recently. Anyone else noticing this? https://t.co/3rlsR43Q9t
— Marie Haynes (@Marie_Haynes) July 16, 2020
Yep, seeing similar things since today.
— Steven van Vessum (@Stevenvvessum) July 16, 2020
Def. seems "rich result' related, not just FAQ... trying to dig in... pic.twitter.com/nmoSWuLLnB
— Mordy Oberstein (@MordyOberstein) July 16, 2020
So much schema abuse going on around FAQ on pages that don't need it or answering same questions on multiple pages. 🤦♀️
— Melissa Popp (@poppupwriter) July 16, 2020
Hm, if everybody used FAQ markup, I'd understand G showing only ONE result with FAQ schema per SERP.
— Daniel Marx (@mediamarx) July 16, 2020
But SERPs where we were the only ones to have it, mostly don't show any FAQ rich results at all now.
Having said that, I am seeing more often only 2 domains being shown in the SERPs for some (not all) queries that I used to see 3 for. And, when clicking on "see the other bazillion similar entries) in 100 result view - FAQ's appearing = only 1
— Peter Mindenhall (@PeterMindenhall) July 16, 2020
Seeing this too. Classic. Get everyone to mark up every question an answer because they get something out of it, Google feeds their knowledge graph with properly formulated Q&As. Take it away when they have enough.
— Rick Talbot (@rtalbot55) July 16, 2020
Maybe Google is cracking down on this? We have seen Google do this before with starmageddon and with rich results in 2015 and in 2013. Google said they do not like to clutter the results with too many rich results - so maybe Google is doing another pruning here?
Forum discussion at Twitter.
