Searchlight is Aztek's marketing news roundup that brings together the week’s most relevant developments in marketing, search, AI, and digital strategy, all in one place. We update this article throughout the week with news we think is worth your time, along with context to help you understand what changed, why it matters, and what it could mean for your business.
This week's topics:
05/26: Google Killed FAQ Rich Results
If you've noticed some chatter in SEO circles this month about FAQ schema, structured data, and whether rich results are "dead," here's what actually happened and what it means for your website.
On May 7, Google permanently removed FAQ rich results from search. Those expandable question-and-answer dropdowns that used to appear beneath some organic listings, the ones that let a page take up more real estate on the results page and potentially pull in extra clicks, are gone. No exceptions, no phased approach, Google just updated the Search Central documentation and killed it off.
The reporting infrastructure will follow in stages:
- May 7, 2026: FAQ rich results stop appearing in Google Search
- June 2026: FAQ rich result report and Rich Results Test support removed from Search Console
- August 2026: FAQ rich result support removed from the Search Console API
If you have automated dashboards or reports pulling FAQ data through the API, those need to be updated before August or they'll start returning silent errors.
What You Don't Need To Do
Before getting into what this means for your strategy, it's worth clearing up the overreaction that's been circulating. You don't need to strip FAQ structured data from your pages. Google's own documentation confirms that unused structured data doesn't cause search problems, and the company explicitly stated it will continue using FAQPage markup to help understand page content.
The display feature may be gone, but the underlying machine-readable signal isn't. If your development team is asking whether to do a full audit and removal, the answer is you likely may not have to at all. You also don't need to remove FAQ sections from your service pages or product pages. Google didn't say question-and-answer content is unhelpful, it just retired the visual SERP enhancement.
Where That Effort Should Go Instead
FAQ rich results were attractive because they created a shortcut to structure your content a certain way, apply the right markup, and earn more visible real estate in search results. That formula worked for a while, but the feature was always a wrapper around something that matters more: is your content actually answering the specific questions buyers have when they're trying to figure out if your company is the right fit?
AI Overviews, Google's AI Mode, ChatGPT, and Perplexity are all pulling from content that clearly and specifically answers real questions. The pages earning citations in AI-generated answers aren't the ones with a generic FAQ block bolted on at the bottom. They're the ones where the content itself is built around answering something precise and useful. That could be anything from the kind of questions your sales team hears on the first call to the thing your buyer types into a search bar at 9pm before deciding whether to request a demo.
If a buyer asks an AI tool what to look for when choosing a company in your category, and your website can't answer that question clearly enough to be cited, you're not just losing a SERP feature. You're losing a consideration-stage conversation before it ever starts.
Three Practical Next Steps
- Don't rush to remove FAQ schema. There's no SEO penalty for leaving it in place, and it continues to function as a content comprehension signal.
- Do audit whether your existing FAQ content is actually answering real buyer questions, or whether it's structured around keywords rather than decisions.
- Redirect the effort toward your service and solution pages. The questions your sales team fields every week, about process, pricing, timelines, and what makes you different, belong on those pages in plain language. That's what earns visibility in AI answers. It's also what converts the visitors who do make it to your site.
The businesses that handle this transition well won't be the ones who found a new schema trick. They'll be the ones who finally got around to making their website answer the questions their buyers actually have.
05/27: Your Buyers Are Using AI To Research Vendors. Are You Showing Up?
B2B buyers aren’t waiting for your sales team to explain who you are anymore. A growing number of them (73% to be exact) are using AI tools like ChatGPT and Perplexity to research vendors, build shortlists, compare services, check reviews, and get a feel for pricing before they ever land on a company website.
The research process that used to require bouncing between a dozen websites can now happen inside one AI conversation. A buyer can ask, “Who are the best agencies for this?” or “How does Company A compare to Company B?” and get a summarized answer in seconds. By the time they click through to your site, they may already have an opinion about whether you’re a good fit.
The Gap Between How Buyers Research And How Marketers Measure
Here’s where things get messy. Buyers are already using AI as part of the vendor research process, but most marketing teams still aren’t tracking whether they show up in those answers. Instead, they are measuring success through the usual suspects: Google rankings, website traffic, and form fills. Those metrics matter, but they don’t tell the full story anymore. They miss what’s happening earlier in the buying process, especially when an AI tool is shaping the buyer’s shortlist before that person ever visits your website.
If your analytics setup doesn’t separate AI-referred traffic from other channels, you’re probably missing useful context. Someone who finds you through ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, or another AI tool may arrive with more intent than a typical search visitor. They’ve already asked questions and seen some kind of comparison, so they’re not starting from zero when they reach your site.
What AI Tools Are Actually Doing With Your Content
When a buyer asks an AI tool to compare vendors or explain different service options, the tool has to build its answer from whatever it can find online. That might include your website, blog posts, case studies, third-party mentions, reviews, directories, and any other credible source connected to your business.
Then it decides whether you belong in the answer. There’s no ad buy for that placement, and there’s no quick bid adjustment that gets you into the recommendation. AI tools are looking for clear, specific, consistent information they can understand and summarize. If your online presence is vague, outdated, or thin, the tool has less to work with.
That means your content has a new job. It still needs to help people, and it still needs to rank. Now it also needs to give AI tools enough context to accurately describe what you do, who you help, and why you’re different from the other companies in your space.
What This Means For B2B Marketing Teams
The B2B buying journey is getting a little strange. Buyers may contact fewer vendors directly, but they’re doing more independent research before that contact happens. By the time someone fills out your form, they may already have compared you against competitors and formed a pretty clear opinion.
Your service pages play a big role in that process. They’re not just SEO pages or sales enablement copy. They’re source material. If those pages only say broad things like “custom solutions” or “full-service support,” an AI tool won’t have much substance to pull from. Specific service pages that explain who you work with, what problems you solve, how your process works, and what makes your approach credible give both people and AI tools something useful to go on.
Tracking is part of this too. If you’re not already looking at traffic from ChatGPT, Perplexity, Gemini, and similar tools, it’s a good time to start. It won’t show you every AI-influenced touchpoint, but it can help you understand whether this channel is already sending people your way and what those visitors do once they arrive.
Don’t Throw Out What Already Works
This doesn’t mean SEO is dead. It also doesn’t mean you need to chase a brand-new acronym every time someone on LinkedIn invents one.
Strong SEO, useful content, clear service pages, case studies, reviews, and a well-structured website all still matter. In fact, those are the same inputs AI tools rely on when they’re building answers. Good marketing fundamentals are not becoming less important. They’re becoming useful in more places.
The real question is whether your content is specific enough to hold up when someone else summarizes it. Can an AI tool clearly understand what you do? Can it tell who you’re best for? Can it find proof that backs up your claims? Can it separate you from a generic description of your industry?
Those have always been good marketing questions. The difference now is that buyers may be asking them through an AI tool before they ever ask you.
