By Iliass El Barhoumi · Published · Last updated
How is q&a structure scored?
Q&A structure is worth 7 of 100 points, 7 of the 60 in the Selected lever, which asks “Is there a passage worth quoting?” The engine scores it with these rules:
- 4 points for question-shaped headings: 2 or more earn full marks, one earns half.
- 3 points for FAQPage or QAPage JSON-LD on the page.
- The visible questions are what earn most of the points. Markup with no visible questions behind it is the weaker signal.
What does a pass and a fail look like?
| Verdict | Example |
|---|---|
| Pass | A “Frequently asked questions” section with five H3 questions, each followed by a two-sentence answer, and FAQPage JSON-LD carrying the same five questions word for word. |
| Fail | An accordion whose questions are styled spans rather than headings, with answers loaded by JavaScript on click. A crawler sees neither the structure nor, often, the answers. |
How do you fix q&a structure?
In the order worth doing it:
- Collect the questions customers actually ask, from support, sales calls and site search.
- Write each as an H2 or H3 and answer it in the first sentence underneath.
- Keep the answers in the HTML, not loaded on click.
- Add FAQPage JSON-LD that repeats the visible questions and answers exactly.
A scan reports the evidence behind the verdict, such as the sections, paragraphs or tokens that failed, and the fix prompt hands the same evidence to a coding agent so it can make the change for you.
Related checks in the Selected lever
- What is answer-first writing? — 13 points
- What makes a passage extractable by an AI engine? — 10 points
- Do headings matter for AI search? — 9 points
- Does formatting change whether AI quotes your page? — 9 points
- Why do AI engines prefer pages with numbers in them? — 8 points
- Which schema types help with AI citation? — 4 points
Frequently asked questions
Is FAQ schema still worth adding?
Google stopped showing FAQ rich results for most sites in 2023, so it no longer changes how a page looks in Google. It still states the question-answer mapping explicitly for any system that reads it, and it is harmless when it matches the visible text.
How many questions should an FAQ section have?
As many as people genuinely ask, which is usually three to eight. Two question headings are enough for full marks on the structure half of this check.