---
title: "A year of SearchPilot split tests on adding FAQ schema"
url: https://seomadman.com/research/faq-schema-uplift-searchpilot
section: research
published: 2026-09-20T00:00:00.000Z
modified: 2026-09-20T00:00:00.000Z
author: Adam Hafez
topics: ["Structured data", "SERP features"]
---

# A year of SearchPilot split tests on adding FAQ schema

## The short answer

SearchPilot ran controlled split tests adding FAQ schema across many clients and industries from 2019 to 2020, finding 67% of tests positive with organic traffic uplifts typically between 4% and 15%, one test reaching 25%. One test turned negative when FAQ schema replaced review and price markup instead of running alongside it, a 5% decline.

## Key takeaways

- SearchPilot found that 67% of its FAQ schema split tests across clients and industries produced a positive result on organic traffic.
- Positive tests typically showed organic traffic uplifts between 4% and 15%, with one outlier test reaching a 25% uplift.
- The one negative result in SearchPilot's data came from a test that swapped review and price schema for FAQ schema rather than adding it alongside them, a 5% decline.
- Uplifts tended to run higher on mobile than desktop, which SearchPilot attributes to the FAQ rich result claiming more SERP real estate on smaller screens.
- This case study predates Google's later restriction and removal of the FAQ rich result, so its uplift figures describe a feature that no longer produces a visible result today.

Most of the industry commentary on FAQ schema treats it as a single lever: add it, get a bigger
snippet, get more clicks. SearchPilot's own testing across a year of client work complicates that
story in a useful way. The markup won more often than it lost, but the size of the win moved with
the device, the wording of the questions, and what other markup was already competing for the same
SERP space.

## What the tests actually measured

SearchPilot's July 2020 case study updates an earlier report from August 2019, folding in a wider
run of controlled split tests on FAQ schema "across various clients across various industries." Each
test follows the same structure the company uses across its case studies: similar pages on a live
site are split into a control group, which keeps its existing markup unchanged, and a variant group,
which gets FAQPage schema added to FAQ content the page already displayed. Both groups run at the
same time, on the same site, so the only difference between them is the markup itself, not the
calendar period. SearchPilot compares the variant group's actual organic traffic against a
statistical forecast of what it would have done without the change, and reports the result with a
confidence interval rather than a raw before-and-after percentage.

## What it found

**Sixty-seven percent of the FAQ schema tests SearchPilot has run came back positive**, which the
company describes as its most consistently positive test type across everything it publishes.
Positive results typically landed between a 4% and 15% uplift in organic traffic, wider than the 3%
to 8% range SearchPilot had reported a year earlier, with one client test reaching a 25% uplift from
adding FAQ schema to FAQ content that was already live on the page.

**The one negative result came from a markup trade-off, not the schema itself.** SearchPilot found
that Google would award only one of FAQ or review/price rich results on a given page, not both. One
test removed review and price schema specifically to let FAQ schema win the SERP feature instead,
and that swap produced a 5% decline in organic traffic. SearchPilot reads this as evidence that
review and price data carries more weight than FAQ data for ecommerce-style pages where review
content is relevant to the user, rather than as a mark against FAQ schema on its own.

**Device and question wording both moved the number.** Uplifts ran consistently higher on mobile
than desktop across the positive tests, which SearchPilot attributes to the FAQ rich result claiming
proportionally more of a smaller mobile screen. On one client, rewriting the first FAQ question to
target a higher search-volume keyword, while keeping the schema itself unchanged, produced a further
statistically significant 2% uplift in traffic and a 0.2 percentage point lift in conversion rate,
a reminder that the questions themselves still function as content, not just markup.

## Why this is a 2020 result, not a current one

Nothing about this case study's mechanism survives to today. The uplift in every positive test came
from winning the FAQ rich result and the extra SERP space it occupied, and Google no longer grants
that result to anyone. Google restricted FAQ rich results to authoritative government and health
sites in August 2023, then removed the feature for those remaining sites too on 7 May 2026, as
[covered separately](/news/faq-rich-results-removed). A split test run today cannot reproduce these
percentages through the route that produced them, because the SERP feature they were competing for
is gone.

What survives is the shape of the evidence, not the numbers. SearchPilot's separate, later test on
[removing FAQ schema after the rich result disappeared](/studies/faq-content-ab-test-searchpilot)
found no traffic effect either way, which is consistent with this earlier data: the traffic gain here
tracked winning a visible rich result, and once that result stopped existing, so did the traffic
reason to keep the markup. The two case studies, read together, describe the same feature's full
arc, a real uplift while the SERP feature existed, and nothing measurable once it did not.

## Why we care

Schema case studies age unevenly. A controlled split test is stronger evidence than an observational
before-and-after comparison at the moment it runs, but the result it produces is tied to whatever
SERP feature the schema was competing for. This one is worth keeping on record precisely because it
shows what FAQ schema did do, with real controlled numbers, before the feature it depended on was
taken away. Anyone weighing whether a still-active piece of structured data is worth the
implementation effort should read case studies like this one for the method, not the percentages,
because the percentages have an expiration date the method does not.

## Frequently asked questions

### Does a 67% positive rate mean FAQ schema will help most sites today?

No. These tests ran in 2019 and 2020, while Google still awarded the FAQ rich result to any eligible site. Google restricted that eligibility in August 2023 and removed the feature entirely by May 2026, so a test run today could not reproduce these uplifts through the same mechanism, winning extra SERP space, because that space no longer exists to win.

### Why would adding FAQ schema ever produce a negative result?

SearchPilot's one negative test did not test FAQ schema in isolation. It removed review and price schema to make room for FAQ schema, after finding Google would show only one of the two rich result types on a given page. The 5% decline reflects losing review and price snippets, not FAQ schema itself backfiring.

### How does this differ from SearchPilot's later test on removing FAQ schema?

This case study is from 2020 and measures what happened when FAQ schema was added while Google still displayed the FAQ rich result. SearchPilot's separate 2024 case study, covered in our piece on the FAQ content and schema split tests, measured what happened when FAQ schema was removed after Google had already stopped showing the rich result, and found no traffic effect either way. Together they describe the same feature on opposite sides of its removal.

## Sources

1. [SEO test: FAQ Schema impact on SEO performance](https://www.searchpilot.com/resources/case-studies/seo-split-test-lessons-adding-faq-schema) - SearchPilot (primary)