Looks like Google may be making a change to how many FAQ rich results can show in the Google Search results per search result snippet. Previously, Google would show many FAQ results below a snippet, now Google has reduced it to a maximum of two. I am not sure if this is a bug or a feature, but I cannot bring up more than two for most my tests in the US.
Update: Google's Danny Sullivan confirmed Google has made this change:
Yes, we made a change recently that limits these to two maximum.
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) June 18, 2021
Old post continued...
Mark Barrera spotted this first and posted this on Twitter, saying "Looks like Google is restricting FAQs to only show two and no ability to see more. Both of these sites have more than two FAQs marked up." Yep, I see the same, here is his screen shot:
Previously, we would see many listed, you can see some samples over here and here I'll embed one:
I did ask John Mueller of Google if something has changed with FAQs in Google Search. He told me on Twitter "I'm not aware of the details, but it looks like the usual evolution of search features." By "normal evolution" is that Google has often pulled back how often and how many rich results are shown for the 30 or so other rich results over time. As more and more sites use it, Google doesn't want all of the search results to be polluted with the same rich results. So they limit how many are shown based on some sort of algorithm and yes, core updates can and do impact which sites show some rich results - so I assume that is what is being used as the guideline here as well on some level.
John did add this is not necessarily about abuse:
I don't see it as a matter of abuse - it's just code, it won't take it personally :-). These things always need to find a balance, and especially in the beginning, it can be quite dynamic. If it's useful, people *should* use it.
— 🍌 John 🍌 (@JohnMu) June 18, 2021
Danny also said this later:
I've seen several people suggest this is something we did because of SEO gaming. It's not. SEOs couldn't game how many we displayed. Our automated systems did that. We just review things all the time and determined showing up to two was most useful, when we show at all.
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) June 18, 2021
I personally can trigger it outside of the US but maybe this is just a bug and Google is fixing it or maybe Google is making the change and it just has not rolled out everywhere? Or maybe Google is showing fewer but not a maximum of two? Weird.
you are right, any none COVID examples to share? pic.twitter.com/svZtSguVdC
— Barry Schwartz (@rustybrick) June 17, 2021
I wasn’t lying ;)
— Sunny Matharu 💬 (@s_matharu) June 17, 2021
Here’s more. “Ir35 self employed” pic.twitter.com/MSDuVDIE5i
Yep, I'm now seeing a mix. This SERP has one listing with 2 FAQs and then another listing with 3. pic.twitter.com/VoTeNkgbMB
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) June 17, 2021
We have seen a drop in rich results for FAQs before but not in the specific number shown for a single snippet.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
