FAQ schema in Elementor and Yoast

Is FAQ schema in Elementor and Yoast still worth it in 2026?

Only if you already have FAQ content, and not for the dropdowns. Google’s Search Central changelog states that the FAQ rich result “will no longer appear in Google Search starting May 7, 2026”, and on 15 June 2026 Google removed the documentation for it entirely.

That was the end of a long decline. In August 2020, John Mueller of Google said in a Webmaster Central hangout that Google was:

“showing fewer”

FAQ rich results, because

“suddenly everyone has added FAQ markup to their pages”,

as reported by Search Engine Journal. In August 2023, Google limited FAQ rich results to

“well-known, authoritative government and health websites”,

as reported by Search Engine Roundtable. For a small UK business site, the dropdowns had effectively been out of reach for nearly three years before they disappeared.

So who does FAQ markup help now? Nobody, as far as Google’s search results go. The rich result has gone for everyone, from a Totnes café to the NHS. What remains is the markup itself, which is still valid Schema.org vocabulary and which Google’s changelog does not ask anyone to remove.

Our own data shows how little the feature was doing. Search Console logged impressions for separate #1 and #2 anchor links on this very page, and those kept appearing after 7 May 2026. Whatever was producing them, it was not the FAQ rich result. The next section explains how the clash between the two plugins starts.

Why do Elementor and Yoast clash over FAQ schema?

Elementor and Yoast clash because both can describe the same page as an FAQ. When two plugins each write their own version of the same markup, you can end up with two competing descriptions of one page, and that is the kind of thing Search Console flags.

Elementor’s Accordion widget has a FAQ Schema toggle. In our build, it sat at the very bottom of the Content, then Layout, tab. Yoast, meanwhile, has a Schema tab on every page with a Page type setting, and Yoast’s own help centre explains that it automatically describes any page containing a Yoast FAQ block as an FAQPage, on top of whatever you choose there.

We hit this on one of our one page websites, which include basic SEO as standard. We built the FAQ with Elementor’s Accordion widget as normal, and shortly afterwards Google Search Console emailed a warning about the page’s FAQ markup.

Think of it like two people filling in the same form for you. Each one is trying to help, but the person reading it now has two answers and no idea which to believe. The fix is to let one person fill it in, which is exactly what the steps below do.

How do you fix FAQ schema in Elementor and Yoast, step by step?

You fix FAQ schema in Elementor and Yoast by making a hand-written JSON-LD block the only source of FAQ markup on the page. JSON-LD (JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data) is the most widely used format for structured data: a small block of code that describes the page to machines without changing what visitors see.

1. Turn off Elementor’s FAQ Schema toggle

• Edit your page with Elementor and select your Accordion widget.
• Find the FAQ Schema toggle at the bottom of the widget’s settings.
• Leave it set to No, then update the page.

Switching off the plugin’s FAQ feature to fix FAQ markup sounds backwards. It is not: you are only stopping Elementor writing its version, so yours can be the single one.

2. Add your FAQ markup in an HTML widget

• In the Elementor editor, add an HTML widget, ideally straight after your accordion.
• Paste the code below and replace the placeholders with your real questions and answers, word for word as they appear in the accordion.
• Give every question a name and every answer a text, and keep the answers concise.

<script type="application/ld+json">
{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "FAQPage",
  "mainEntity": [
    {
      "@type": "Question",
      "name": "YOUR QUESTION 1 HERE?",
      "acceptedAnswer": {
        "@type": "Answer",
        "text": "YOUR ANSWER 1 HERE."
      }
    },
    {
      "@type": "Question",
      "name": "YOUR QUESTION 2 HERE?",
      "acceptedAnswer": {
        "@type": "Answer",
        "text": "YOUR ANSWER 2 HERE."
      }
    }
  ]
}
</script>

The HTML widget is invisible to visitors but readable by search engines, so your accordion stays exactly as it looks now.

3. Set Yoast’s page type to Web Page

• In the Yoast SEO box below your content, open the Schema tab.
• Set Page type to Web Page, not FAQ Page, and save.

Yoast’s help centre warns that describing a page as an FAQPage without the matching questions and answers in the correct markup “may result in errors or unexpected behaviors”. Setting Web Page leaves the FAQ description to your HTML widget alone.

4. Clear caches and test the markup

• Update the page, then clear every cache: Elementor, your caching plugin, your host and your browser.
• Run the page through the Schema Markup Validator, the free checker run by Schema.org at validator.schema.org.
• Confirm it finds exactly one FAQPage with no errors.

We used to send readers to Google’s Rich Results Test for this step. With the FAQ rich result gone, there is no FAQ result for that tool to award, so Schema.org’s own validator is now the better check: it tests the markup against the vocabulary itself rather than against a Google feature.

5. Ask Google to recrawl the page

• In Google Search Console, paste the page URL into URL Inspection and choose Request indexing.

That covers the build. Whether any of this helps with AI tools such as ChatGPT is a fair next question, and the answer is less exciting than some of the marketing suggests.

Does FAQ schema help with AI search or ChatGPT?

We have found no independent data showing that FAQPage markup makes a page more likely to be cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity or Google’s AI features. Plenty of articles now sell FAQ schema as an “AI search” tactic, but none we could find shows its working.

Our own numbers point to the content, not the code. In the 12 months to September 2026, this FAQ schema guide sent 60 visitors to weareqed.com from chatgpt.com, according to our GA4 data, which we break down in our guide to how to get cited by ChatGPT and Google’s AI tools. The guide was cited because it answers a specific technical question clearly, and that would be true with or without markup behind it.

So write your FAQ answers for people first. Clear, specific, standalone answers are what both readers and AI systems can use. The markup is a tidy description of that content, not a substitute for it.

When should you leave FAQ schema off altogether?

Leave FAQ schema off when the page has no genuine, visible question-and-answer section. A blog post with question-style headings answered in flowing paragraphs is not an FAQ, and marking it up as one describes the page inaccurately.

There are two other cases where this guide does not apply. If you build in the WordPress block editor rather than Elementor and use Yoast’s own FAQ block, Yoast already handles the markup, so there is nothing to clash with. And if you have no FAQ markup at all today, the 2026 change removes the main reason to add it.

If you are keeping Elementor and Yoast on the same site, the bigger long-term risk is the two drifting apart after updates. Keeping plugins in step is part of what our WordPress care plans cover.

What should you do next?

Check your FAQ pages for duplicate markup, fix any you find with the steps above, and stop chasing a rich result that no longer exists. One clean source of FAQ markup, matching what visitors can actually read, is the whole job.

As ever, write for your audience, not for bots. And when someone online tells you a Google change means you must rip out your schema, go and read what Google actually said before you touch a thing.

If you would rather someone checked your Elementor and Yoast setup for you, get in touch with QED Web Design. No hard sell, and it is only ever me you will be dealing with.