The questions that come in by phone and email often have a short answer. What does it cost? Are you open on Saturday? Do you come out to my area? How do I cancel? Can I pay with Swish, the Swedish mobile payment app? If the answer is on your website, the customer finds out straight away, and you do not have to answer the same thing again.

This guide covers how to write those answers: where to find the questions, what a good answer looks like, where on your site the questions belong and how to keep them up to date. It also covers what has happened to FAQ snippets in Google, because older advice on FAQ schema and SEO no longer holds.

As of 21 October 2026. The details on Google’s search results and structured data have been checked against Google Search Central’s documentation and changelog. Prices in the examples are in Swedish kronor (SEK). Sources are listed at the end.

Why should a business have FAQs on its website?

So that customers get an answer before they get in touch, and so that there is a clear answer from you when Google or an AI service answers the same question.

  • The customer. Price, hours, area, cancellation and payment are questions that decide whether a customer gets in touch at all. In our assessment, a question without an answer often means the customer moves on to someone who has the answer on show.
  • Google and the AI services. In Sweden, 62 per cent of internet users aged 8 and over used AI services in the past year, up from 41 per cent the year before, and 52 per cent used ChatGPT. Just over 7 in 10 say they usually read Google’s AI Overviews. That is according to Svenskarna och internet 2026 (Swedes and the Internet), the annual survey from the Swedish Internet Foundation (Internetstiftelsen). When the question is asked there, the answer has to exist somewhere, ideally on your own site.

You do not need to write in a special way for AI. Google’s guide to generative AI in Search says you do not need to write in a specific way just for it, and that there is no requirement to break your content into small pieces. In our assessment, what helps the customer understand an answer also makes it easier for Google and AI services to repeat it correctly. What Google says about AI optimisation more broadly is covered in What Google says about AI search optimisation.

Does Google show FAQs in search results?

Not any more. For several years, questions and answers marked up with FAQPage schema could appear directly under the link in Google’s results. This was phased out in two steps:

  • On 8 August 2023, Google announced on its blog for site owners that FAQ snippets would only be shown for well-known, authoritative government and health websites. Other sites would generally no longer get them. Google said the change was not a ranking change and that sites did not need to remove the markup: structured data that is not used causes no problems, but it has no visible effect either.
  • On 7 May 2026, Google stopped showing FAQ snippets altogether, for every site. This is in Google’s documentation changelog, and on 15 June 2026 Google removed the documentation for the feature. According to Search Engine Journal, which quotes Google’s notice, the FAQ report in Search Console and support in the Rich Results Test were to be removed in June 2026, and support in the Search Console API in August 2026.

So FAQ markup no longer affects how your page looks in Google’s results, for anyone. That does not make the questions pointless. The text is as useful to readers as before, and a question written in the customer’s own words can match what they type into the search box. That is our assessment, not something Google promises.

One more thing has changed. Questions and answers in Google Maps, where anyone could ask and answer questions about a business, are being phased out. Google’s developer interface for the feature was shut down on 3 November 2025, and in December 2025 a Google product specialist wrote in Google’s help forum that customers should use an AI-powered Ask button in Maps instead, according to Search Engine Roundtable. That makes your website the place where you decide what the answer is.

How do you find the questions customers ask?

Take them from what already comes in, not from what you think customers wonder about. Five places go a long way:

  • Calls and emails. Keep a note by the phone and write down every question for two weeks. Search your inbox for question marks and words like “cost”, “open” and “can I”.
  • Your booking system. Read the comments on bookings and the messages about rebooking and cancelling. They show what customers were unsure about when they booked.
  • Your reviews. Look for misunderstandings, such as “didn’t know it cost extra” or “thought it was included”. Each one is a question that should have had an answer on your site.
  • “People also ask” in Google. Search for your service and your town, and note the questions in that box and the suggestions as you start typing. If your site has Search Console, you can also filter queries by words like “how”, “what” and “cost”. If your customers search in Swedish, do the same with the Swedish words.
  • Your staff. The people who answer the phone, work the till or visit customers know which questions keep coming back. Ask them which three questions they answer most often.

Then choose the questions that come up again and again, and those that decide whether the customer books. A question nobody asks makes the page longer without helping anyone. If you also want to see what AI services say when customers ask about your business, the method is in Is your business in AI answers? How to measure it.

How do you write a good FAQ?

Answer the question in the first sentence. The rest of the answer explains the conditions. These are the rules we work from:

  1. The answer first. Yes, no, a price, a time or an area. “Yes, Saturdays 10:00–15:00” is an answer. “We are happy to adapt to your wishes” is not.
  2. Figures with a date. Give the price, the time and the area, and when it applies from: “Prices from 1 October 2026”. If you sell to consumers in Sweden, the price must include VAT (moms) and other taxes, under the Swedish Price Information Act (prisinformationslagen).
  3. One question per answer. Do not bundle price, hours and tax deductions into one answer. Each question gets its own heading, so it can be found, linked to and read on its own.
  4. The same details as in your Google Business Profile. Opening hours, area, phone number, services and prices should be the same on your website and in your profile. Google’s guidelines for Business Profiles say the profile should represent the business accurately and as it is recognised in the real world. If your site says one thing and your profile another, neither the customer nor Google knows what applies.
  5. No sales copy. An answer that says “we’re the best” or “contact us for more information” does not answer the question. If the offer belongs in the answer, write it as a fact: what it costs and what is included.
  6. The customer’s words in the question. “How much is a men’s haircut?” rather than “Pricing”. Customers search in their words, not in your headings.
  7. An honest no is also an answer. “No, we don’t take walk-ins” saves a phone call and a disappointed customer.

Before and after: a hairdresser, a plumber and a restaurant

The examples below are made up. Prices, times and menus are examples, not guide prices or details from any real business.

Made-up example: hairdresser. The question is “How much is a men’s haircut?”

Before: “We have great prices for every kind of cut! Our skilled stylists will find the right look for you. Contact us for more information.”

After: “SEK 450, and the appointment takes 30 minutes including wash and styling. A beard trim in the same visit costs SEK 150 extra. Prices from 1 October 2026, including VAT.”

The answer after starts with the price, says what is included and how long it takes, and has a date. More on how salons can work on their visibility is in Visibility for hairdressers.

Made-up example: plumber. The question is “Do you have an emergency service at weekends?”

Before: “We’re always here for you when disaster strikes! Call us around the clock and we’ll fix it fast. We have years of experience with emergencies and can also help with the ROT deduction.”

After: “Yes, Saturday and Sunday 08:00–20:00. The call-out supplement is SEK 900 on top of the hourly rate, and we are usually with you within three hours. If you have a leak outside those hours, turn off the main water valve and call us at 07:00 the next weekday. Prices from 1 October 2026.”

The answer before promises “around the clock” when the Google Business Profile says something else, brings in the ROT deduction (rotavdrag, the Swedish tax deduction on labour for home repairs) and gives no price. You can rely on the answer after without having to call, and the ROT deduction gets a question of its own.

Comparison of two answers to the question of whether a plumber has an emergency service at weekends, in a made-up example. The answer before opens by saying the business is always there when disaster strikes, has no figures or date, mixes the emergency service and the ROT tax deduction in one answer and promises around the clock when the Google Business Profile says otherwise. The answer after opens with yes, Saturday and Sunday 08:00–20:00, gives a call-out supplement of SEK 900 on top of the hourly rate, is dated 1 October 2026, answers one question and has the same hours as the profile.
One question, two answers. The answer after starts with the answer, has figures and a date and says the same as the Google Business Profile. Made-up example.

Made-up example: restaurant. The question is “Do you have gluten-free options?”

Before: “Absolutely! We love looking after all our guests and are happy to adapt to your wishes. Welcome!”

After: “Yes, seven of our twelve main courses can be made gluten-free and are marked G on the menu. Our kitchen handles wheat flour, so we cannot promise the dishes are free from traces of gluten. Please tell us about allergies when you book. Menu from 1 September 2026.”

The answer after says yes, says how many dishes it applies to and also says what counts against it. That kind of caveat is what lets the customer trust the rest. More advice for restaurants is in Visibility for restaurants.

Where should FAQs go on your website?

On the service page where the question comes up, visibly in the text. The question of what a beard trim costs belongs on the beard trim page, and the question about the call-out supplement on the emergency service page. That is where the customer is reading when the question arises, and where the answer fits with the rest of the page. How to build a service page more generally is covered in How to write a service page that sells.

A separate FAQ page works for things that apply to the whole business, such as payment, cancellation, parking and gift cards. Write the answer in one place and link to it from the other pages, rather than copying the same answer onto ten pages. Then you only have to change it in one place.

Visible, not hidden

The answers should be in the page text. An accordion, where the customer clicks a question to expand the answer, is common and saves space. Google itself suggests accordions and tabs to save space on mobile, but also says it will not load content that requires the user to click, swipe or type to load. So the answer should be in the page from the start, even if it is collapsed, and not fetched only when someone clicks. In our assessment, the most important answers, such as the price, should be visible without a click.

FAQ schema: what Google says and what it does

FAQPage schema is code behind the page, usually JSON-LD, that marks up the questions and answers so a machine can read them without interpreting the layout. This is what Google says, as of 21 October 2026:

  • FAQ snippets are no longer shown, since 7 May 2026. The markup has no visible effect in Google’s results.
  • No special markup is needed for the AI features. Google says there is no special schema.org structured data you need to add to appear in AI Overviews and AI Mode, and that structured data is not required for generative AI in Search. The guide still recommends structured data as part of your SEO work, because it can make a page eligible for rich results. For FAQs, there is no such result any more.
  • The markup must match what is visible. Google’s general structured data guidelines say not to mark up content that readers cannot see, and that the markup must be a true representation of the page content.

Beyond that, the effect is unclear. We have not found any statement from Google that FAQPage markup is used for anything else in Search after 7 May 2026, and OpenAI’s page about its crawlers does not mention structured data at all. We keep the markup on our own articles, because the questions are visible on the page anyway and the markup is built from the same list, but we do not expect it to show anything in Google.

We have also made the mistake the guideline warns about. When we checked our own site on 16 October 2026, there were 122 questions in the FAQPage markup that were not visible on the page, and 49 answers in the markup that differed from the text, across 30 article pages and two pricing pages. Since then, the text and the markup are built from the same list, and the site is not published if a question in the markup is missing from the page.

So our advice is this: if you have the markup and it matches the text, leave it. If you do not, start with the text. Markup that describes the business itself, such as Organization or LocalBusiness, is covered in AI SEO in practice.

How do you keep the questions up to date?

An out-of-date answer can be worse than no answer, because the customer believes it. Three habits are enough:

  • Date answers that change. Prices, hours, menus and terms get a date in the answer: “Prices from 1 October 2026”. The customer can see how fresh the information is, and you can see which answers need checking.
  • Go through the questions every quarter. Compare them with the questions that have come in since last time, check every figure against your price list and your Google Business Profile, and add the new questions. If the price or hours change in between, change the answer the same day you change the profile. Special hours around public holidays are covered in Opening hours, holidays and exceptions in your Google profile.
  • Remove questions nobody asks. A long list where the customer has to hunt for their question helps less than a short list of the questions people actually ask. Also cut questions whose answer is already clear on the page.

Decide who owns the list. Without someone responsible, the questions stay as they were written on the day the site was built.

The same details should also match outside your site, in directories and on social channels, because AI services take their information from several sources. How this works in ChatGPT is explained in How your business shows up in ChatGPT.

Checklist: before you publish your FAQs

15 questions to start from for a local business

Not all of them fit every business. Cut the ones that do not apply to you and swap the words for the ones your customers use.

Want to know what AI services say when customers ask about your business? In our AI review, AI-genomgången (page in Swedish), we put 25 of your customers’ questions to six AI services and show who is named, which sources the answers rely on and what is said about your business. It costs SEK 2,995 excluding VAT, once. Nobody can promise that a business will be named in AI answers, and neither do we.

Frequently asked questions

What should a website FAQ include?

What customers ask before they get in touch: what it costs, when you are open or can come out, which area you cover, how to cancel and how to pay. Take the questions from calls, emails, your booking system, your reviews and your staff, not from what you think customers wonder about.

How do you write a good FAQ?

Answer in the first sentence, with a yes, a no, a price or a time. Give figures with a date, one question per answer and the same details as in your Google Business Profile. Leave out the sales copy: an answer that does not answer the question does not help the customer.

Does Google still show FAQs in search results?

No. Google limited FAQ snippets to well-known government and health websites in August 2023 and stopped showing them altogether on 7 May 2026, according to Google’s own documentation. So FAQ markup no longer changes how your page looks in search results. As of 21 October 2026.

Do you need FAQ schema to appear in AI answers?

Google says no special structured data is needed to appear in AI Overviews and AI Mode. If you do have FAQPage markup, it should match the text visible on the page. We have not found any statement from Google that the markup is used for anything else in Search since FAQ snippets were removed.

Should FAQs be on a separate page?

Put each question on the service page where it comes up, for example the price of a beard trim on the beard trim page. A separate page works for general questions about things like payment and cancellation. The answers should be in the page text, not loaded only when the customer clicks.

How often should you update your FAQ?

Go through the questions every quarter, and change an answer the same day the price, hours or terms change. Date answers that change, for example “prices from 1 October 2026”, and remove questions nobody asks any more.

Sources

All web pages read on 21 October 2026. The details on Google’s features reflect the situation in October 2026 and may change.