Website with an FAQ page: why a list of frequently asked questions saves time

Anyone searching "website with an FAQ page" has usually already heard two different promises, and it's worth separating them before going further: that a list of frequently asked questions helps you rank better on Google, and that it saves time managing customers. The first promise has been false for a few months now. The second needs checking, not taking for granted.

Since May 2026, Google no longer rewards FAQs in search results

Until recently, a page with questions marked up in the right format (the FAQPage structured data type) could show up on Google with a special box: the normal link, and below it a list of clickable questions that expanded without leaving the search results. It was a way to take up more visual space, and it was one of the most-cited reasons for adding an FAQ to a site.

That effect no longer exists for anyone. Google Search Central's official changelog records the deprecation on May 8, 2026, with an effective date of May 7: from that day the FAQ rich result no longer appears in any search (source: developers.google.com/search/updates, "Deprecating the FAQ rich result feature" entry, checked September 18, 2026). It wasn't even a sudden move: back in August 2023, Google had already restricted this box to government and health institutional sites only, excluding everyone else. The May 2026 change closed that exception too: today the FAQ rich result doesn't appear for any site, institutional or commercial. In mid-June 2026, Google also removed the documentation page dedicated to this structured data type, which now redirects to the general changelog.

The code that marks up questions as FAQPage can stay on an existing page without causing any problems: it isn't an error to fix. It simply doesn't do anything visible anymore. Anyone pitching you an FAQ page today "to rank better on Google" is selling an advantage that stopped existing months ago.

The figure about fewer tickets doesn't hold up

The other promise circulating online is more misleading because it sounds concrete: an FAQ page would supposedly cut calls or support requests by a precise percentage, often 40 or 50%, attributed to "a Forrester study" or "McKinsey". I traced it back to the source, and there is no source: neither organisation has published a report containing that figure, and the percentage changes from blog to blog (20-40%, 25-30%, 35-45%, 40-55%), a sign that it's a number copied from site to site, not a measurement.

Even the single most-cited example, a company said to have cut tickets by 26% after reorganising its help pages, comes from a post written by the vendor who did that reorganisation, not from the company itself: that company's own blog, which describes that exact project, never mentions the figure at all. And the oldest, most-repeated statistic on the topic, the claim that most people would rather solve a problem themselves than contact a company, traces back to a 2013 marketing infographic, never updated since with a verifiable methodology.

There is no reliable, primary-sourced number that says how much an FAQ page actually reduces repeat contact for a small Italian business. It's worth saying so plainly rather than recycling whichever figure comes to hand: admitting the data is missing is more honest than pretending to know it.

What's still true, without needing a percentage

Once the two promises that don't hold up are set aside, a simple piece of logic remains, one that doesn't need a study to be true: answering a common question once, in writing, costs less over time than repeating it out loud every time someone calls or walks in. Anyone running a shop, a practice, a repair business already knows which questions those are, because they hear them every week: how long something takes, what happens in a specific case, how a service works.

The page also works outside opening hours. Anyone deciding to get in touch in the evening or on a Sunday, if they find the answer already there, doesn't have to wait for you to open to know it, and anyone who still calls with that same question in hand arrives with a clearer idea of what they want, which shortens the actual call too.

The reverse is true of an abandoned blog, which I wrote about in website with an integrated blog: if the questions worth answering are few and stable over time, an FAQ page is almost always faster to write and keep up to date than a blog, because it doesn't ask for ongoing commitment, only for staying correct when something actually changes.

When it doesn't help, or only half helps

If no question comes up often enough to justify it, an FAQ stays a list with no real purpose, however well written. That's especially true for anyone whose work varies case by case, where every answer depends on the situation: there, a generic FAQ risks saying something vague that helps no one, or worse, looking like the definitive answer when it isn't.

An FAQ that includes a price or a commercial condition is only useful while it stays true. A figure or a promotion that expired months ago, still sitting online, is worse than having no page at all: readers take it at face value, then find out otherwise on the phone. If a condition changes often, it's more honest to write that it depends on the case and gets quoted individually, rather than leave a number online that's bound to age badly.

What it costs, and where to start

There's no fixed price for adding an FAQ page: it depends on how many questions are needed and how often they need revisiting. On a monthly plan that already includes hours for site changes, like the one I write about in how much does a website cost, an FAQ page often fits into that agreed work without becoming a separate line item.

The starting point isn't writing questions that sound professional. It's looking at the list of the ones you actually hear, on the phone or in person, over the last month. If you've written the same answer more than three times, that question has earned a line on the site. If you'd rather talk it through with someone who already knows your business, get in touch and we can work out together which questions are worth putting in writing.