"FAQ schema steals SERP real estate and lifts clicks."

"FAQ schema steals SERP real estate and lifts clicks."

It did — then it didn't, and the data tells the whole story.

A B2B site marked up 400 pages with FAQ schema in 2022. CTR on those rich results ran 18% above their non-marked pages. Genuine win, while it lasted.

Then Google restricted FAQ rich results to authoritative gov/health sites. Overnight, the same 400 pages lost the rich snippet. CTR fell back to baseline within a month — a measured 19% drop from the inflated peak, landing exactly where it started.

The schema is still in the HTML. It does nothing for them now. The team that built its CTR strategy on a SERP feature watched it evaporate by a policy change they didn't control.

Lesson: features Google gives, Google takes. Build on content and relevance you own, treat rich snippets as a bonus that can vanish — because this one did.