The Brief: Google Killed FAQ Rich Results, B2B Buyers Don't Trust You Anymore, and AI Pilots Are Not a Strategy
In today's brief: Three stories this week that B2B marketers should not ignore. Google quietly killed off a feature many teams built content strategies around. New research confirms what a lot of us have been feeling: B2B buyers have tuned out. And a Gartner analyst is calling out the AI pilot trap most marketing orgs have walked right into.
Today's stories:
1. Google deprecated FAQ rich results, and it already happened
2. 74% of B2B CMOs say buyers are more skeptical of traditional marketing
3. Marketing teams have too much AI activity and not enough AI value
Google Pulled FAQ Rich Results, and Most People Missed It
As of May 7, FAQ rich results are no longer appearing in Google Search. Google added a deprecation notice to its structured data documentation with almost no fanfare, no blog post, and no explanation. Search Console reporting goes away in June, and API support follows in August.
This one has been coming for a while. Google started restricting FAQ rich results back in 2023, limiting them to government and health sites. This deprecation appears to end eligibility for everyone. The FAQ schema markup itself can stay on your pages without causing issues, but it will not earn visible rich results in search. Worth noting: some in the SEO community had been recommending FAQ schema as a way to help AI systems parse content better. Google has not connected this deprecation to that trend, so that remains an open question.
Read more: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-drops-faq-rich-results-from-search/574429/
B2B Buyers Have Stopped Trusting the Playbook
LinkedIn's 2026 Global B2B Marketing Outlook surveyed 1,299 B2B marketers and CMOs across five countries, and the findings are pretty direct. Three-quarters of respondents say buyers are more skeptical of traditional marketing than they were in the past. Nine in 10 CMOs say buyers need to know and trust a brand before they will even engage with it.
The generational shift is part of it. According to the research, 71% of B2B buyers are now Gen Z or millennials, and they behave differently than the buyers most B2B marketing programs were built for. Two-thirds of UK marketers say buyers are turning to peer recommendations, trusted experts, and creators instead of brand-produced content when evaluating suppliers. That has 87% of B2B CMOs planning to increase spending on creator and influencer marketing in the next year. LinkedIn also announced a Creator Marketplace alongside the research to help brands find and work with those creators more easily.
Read more: https://www.marketingweek.com/b2b-cmo-traditional-marketing/
AI Pilots Are Not a Strategy
Gartner VP Analyst Nicole Greene published a piece in MarTech this week that gets at something a lot of marketing leaders already sense: the early phase of AI adoption produced a lot of pilots and productivity gains, but not a lot of measurable business value. Her argument is that the question has shifted from 'What AI tool should we try next?' to 'Where can AI create measurable value, and how do we capture it?'
Her framework organizes AI use cases into three buckets: defend (efficiency and cost reduction), extend (better conversion, lower acquisition costs, stronger personalization), and upend (new capabilities, new markets, competitive repositioning). The key point is that most teams have been focused on defend-level use cases and calling it AI transformation. Greene argues you need all three types, measured against outcomes that actually matter to the business, not just output-per-hour metrics. Speed and cost savings are a starting point, not a finish line.
Read more: https://martech.org/marketing-needs-ai-outcomes-not-more-ai-pilots/
That's it for today.
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FAQs
Did Google remove FAQ rich results?
Yes. Google deprecated FAQ rich results on May 7, 2026. They no longer appear in search results. Search Console reporting ends in June 2026 and API support ends in August 2026. FAQ schema markup can remain on pages without causing issues but will not generate visible results.
Should I remove FAQ schema from my website?
Not necessarily. Google has said unused structured data does not cause problems for search. You can leave FAQ schema in place, but it will not produce rich results in Google Search as of May 2026.
Are B2B buyers skeptical of marketing?
According to LinkedIn's 2026 Global B2B Marketing Outlook, 74% of B2B CMOs say buyers are more skeptical of traditional marketing than in the past. Nine in 10 CMOs say buyers need to already know and trust a brand before they will engage with it.