San Francisco, California – Law firm marketing and SEO company Custom Legal Marketing, has released the latest installment of their Schema for Lawyers video series which was originally going to be about how lawyers could use FAQ Schema to earn a competitive advantage in Google Search. But the search giant dropped support for FAQ and HowTo markups in September, so CLM shifted gears to help their viewers understand why and what happens to all of their FAQ content.

As of September 14th, HowTos are no longer visible in desktop search, and FAQs will only be displayed for government and medical websites. While this could be seen as a setback, Custom Legal Marketing’s co-founder, Jason Bland, has seized the opportunity to guide law firms towards the future of Google search and why these changes are occurring.

Bland connects Google’s decision to drop FAQs with the introduction of generative AI in search results. By leveraging advanced AI, Google aims to provide users with precise information swiftly and without unnecessary distractions. This means they’re cleaning up the search results page to simplify results.

In the video, Bland demonstrates a search for a car accident lawyer, which traditionally includes sponsored, local, and organic search results. With the new generative AI outputs, all of this information is bundled at the top, providing a more efficient and user-friendly experience.

Custom Legal Marketing’s new video explains these changes in detail and demonstrates how this shift can impact lawyers’ online presence and visibility. It sheds light on how Google’s AI can effectively determine the question and answer sections in content, even without the FAQ schema markups.

While the withdrawal of Google’s support for FAQ markups may initially seem disconcerting, it does not indicate an end to Google’s role in answering questions. Instead, it showcases Google’s evolving capabilities in extracting the most relevant content from a law firm’s website to answer user queries effectively.

Next week, Custom Legal Marketing will continue its series by showcasing another schema markup that is not canceled, which every law firm should utilize on their site.