A month ago, Google launched their FAQ schema which essentially gave you a way to markup your FAQ content and Google would show those FAQs in the search results snippets. Well, as expected, it seems to result in less traffic to your web site. Which may or may not be a good thing.
Lily Ray shared on Twitter a Search Console graph showing that after she implemented FAQ for a client their traffic (clicks) to the site dropped off:
The Twitter thread is super fun to read because it goes through the whole thing about Google stealing traffic/content - etc. So have fun reading it, we covered the topic here so many times.
But, one point, some think that the traffic loss for FAQs is a good thing. It is normally people who want free support answers and it might lead to less phone calls to your support desk said some people:
In some cases it's worth it. If it helps users and prevents them from contacting the helpdesk there could be a use case for it. https://t.co/DESJjilv5D
— Arnout Hellemans (@hellemans) June 13, 2019
At my previous employer I worked together with customer service to create highly optimized contact pages. Google became so good at returning that info in search (before FAQ schema was launched) that customer calls were reduced by just over 1/3 - saved tons of 💰💰💰
— Jarno van Driel (@JarnoVanDriel) June 14, 2019
In any event - if you do want the traffic - then maybe test it for some time and if you are not happy with the results, you can remove the markup.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
