FAQ schema

Code that labels questions you already answer

A questions section looks obvious to you. Bold line, answer under it, repeat. To a machine it is a run of text with some formatting near it, and formatting is a hint, not a fact. FAQ schema removes the guessing. It sits in the page code, invisible to visitors, and states plainly: this string is a question, this string is its answer, and here is the next pair.

The rule that trips people up is that the code has to match what a visitor can see. If the markup lists eight questions and the page shows three, that is not clever, it is a mismatch, and a mismatch is a reason for an engine to throw out the markup on the whole page.

Writing the code is the easy half. Deciding what belongs in it is the real work: the questions have to be ones people actually ask, with answers you would give on the phone without hedging.

Worth being clear on one limit. This markup describes content, it does not create any. It cannot make a thin answer count for more, and it cannot make a dull question interesting. If the text under a question is three sentences of throat clearing that never lands on a number, a yes, or a no, labeling it only tells a machine precisely where the throat clearing sits.

Why it matters for a local business

There are two payoffs here and they are not the same size. The first is how a result looks. Marked up questions have been used by search engines to show expandable answers attached to a listing. Whether any given engine does that, and for which kinds of sites, has changed more than once and will change again. Treat the display as a bonus you never plan around.

The second payoff is the durable one. AI answers and assistant style results get built by lifting short, self contained passages out of pages. A question with its answer under it is already that shape. Labeling the pair removes one reason for a machine to skip you and quote somebody else who made it easier.

For a local business the questions worth marking up are the dull ones you answer ten times a week: do you charge for estimates, how soon can somebody come out, which towns do you cover, do you take a card on site. Put them on the page in words a customer would use, mark them up, then keep them true when the answer changes. That is one slice of the technical work sitting under our SEO service.

How it relates to nearby terms

FAQ schema is one type inside the broader family of structured data, the same labeling approach used for products, events, opening hours, and businesses. When an engine turns any of that labeling into something a searcher can see, the visible outcome is called a rich result.

The questions themselves are usually sitting in plain sight. The people also ask block is a free list of how real searchers phrase the thing you sell, in their words rather than your industry's. Take the phrasing, answer it honestly on the page, and the markup has something worth labeling.