October 13, 2026 · Muhammad Umar · More by Muhammad Umar
Google Removed FAQ Rich Results — Shopify Schema Is Inert
Google deprecated FAQ rich results in May 2026 and deleted the docs in June. Here's what that means for the FAQPage schema still running on your Shopify store.
Google's own documentation trail shows a two-step sunset of the FAQ rich result, and the second step is unambiguous: the feature's documentation page no longer exists. On May 8, 2026, Google added a deprecation notice stating the FAQ rich result would stop appearing in Search as of May 7, 2026. On June 15, 2026, Google removed the FAQ rich result documentation page entirely. Fetching that URL today lands on Google's general updates page instead — confirmation, not just a changelog line, that the feature is gone.
What Actually Changed
The two entries in Google Search Central's changelog are specific about timing: the deprecation notice on May 8 states the rich result will no longer appear in Google Search starting May 7, 2026, and the June 15 removal entry explains why the documentation itself was pulled, since the FAQ rich result feature is no longer shown in Google Search results, as announced in the changelog entry in May 2026. Google's stated scope is narrow: this is about the FAQPage rich result specifically. Nothing in these entries touches Product rich results, reviews, or breadcrumbs.
Your FAQPage Schema Isn't Broken, It's Just Inert
Google's own position on unused structured data is that it causes no problems in Search; it simply has no visible effect. That's the operative fact for Shopify merchants: FAQPage JSON-LD still sitting in a theme's FAQ section, or injected by an SEO app, won't throw an error and won't get penalized. It just stopped doing anything in May 2026.
Shopify Never Generated This Natively
Worth knowing if you're auditing where that markup came from: Shopify's own structured_data Liquid filter has never output FAQPage schema. It only renders product objects as schema.org Product or ProductGroup, and article objects as schema.org Article. Any FAQPage JSON-LD on a Shopify store got there by hand, through a theme section, or through a third-party app, not from Shopify's core platform.
What to Actually Do About It
There's no urgency to rip the markup out. Google's documentation is clear that it's harmless dead weight, not a liability. But if a theme section or app is still generating FAQPage schema as part of a workflow someone built specifically to earn that rich result, it's worth knowing the thing it was built for no longer exists, and budgeting the cleanup accordingly rather than assuming the snippet is still showing up in results.