The headline story is that FAQ rich results are dead.
The more important story is that FAQ structured data is not.
Google has stated explicitly that the markup will continue to inform how its systems understand pages, even though it no longer renders a visual rich result. That distinction is the one worth holding onto.
Schema markup is a comprehension layer.
It tells Google, in machine-readable form, what a page is about.
Rich results are a separate display feature that uses some of that data to render visual SERP elements. Google has retired the display.
The comprehension layer remains, and it’s the one that matters now.
This isn’t a small technicality.
AI Overviews, AI Mode, and the broader AI search ecosystem all depend on the comprehension layer to decide which sources to retrieve and which to cite.
Clear, well-structured pages get pulled into AI-generated answers.
Pages that Google can’t parse cleanly do not.