Playbook: Add FAQ schema to review pages without triggering a penalty

Playbook: Add FAQ schema to review pages without triggering a penalty

FAQ rich results got restricted, but on genuine review pages they still help AI citation and can return. Do it without inviting a manual action.

— Only mark up questions a real user asks — pull them from People Also Ask and your search-console queries, not invented ones.
— Each answer must EXACTLY match visible on-page text. Schema-only answers (hidden FAQ) are the fastest path to a structured-data manual action.
— Cap it at 4-6 questions. Stuffing 15 FAQs to farm SERP real estate is exactly what got the feature restricted.
— Don't put promotional/affiliate links inside FAQ answers — Google's guidelines forbid it and it flags the markup.
— Keep questions genuinely informational ("how do we test", "is X worth it") not "where to buy cheapest X".

Gotcha: duplicating the same FAQ schema across 50 review pages (boilerplate "what is affiliate marketing") looks like template spam. Make each page's FAQ product-specific.

Bottom line: real PAA questions, visible matching answers, 4-6 max, no affiliate links inside, page-specific. Hidden or boilerplate FAQ schema is the manual-action trap.