People Also Ask (PAA): what it is and how to show up in Google

The People Also Ask box under Google’s results no longer does what it used to: in August 2026 it stopped quoting paragraphs from websites and started answering with AI. The questions are still there, and still free.

What People Also Ask is and what Google actually calls it

People Also Ask is the set of questions related to the user’s query that appears inside the results page and expands on click. Each question opens a short answer and, when that answer comes from a website, it carries a link to the source page.

Its official name is not People Also Ask: Google files it under exploration features as the related questions group, adding «also known as People Also Ask» in the Visual Elements Gallery.

Why the official name matters

The docs also set the limit on what anyone can promise: Google warns that «you can’t control what shows up here», so the documented value of the box is as a source of topic ideas, not as a source of traffic.

PAA is not a rich result, and it is not your FAQ schema

PAA is not a rich result you switch on with markup; it is an exploration feature Google decides to show. It is not the FAQ accordion on help pages either (that was the FAQPage rich result, now deprecated), nor are the question suggestions from a third-party search engine.

The documented mechanism is still that «when a user expands the question, they’re shown a featured snippet», per the featured snippets guide. That is where the only real control comes from: blocking the snippet with nosnippet or shrinking it with max-snippet, which the docs qualify with «but with no guarantee». It is not a lever for opting out of the new AI answers.

What changed in 2026: the answers are now AI-written

The data, and who measured it

The most cited figure is not Google’s: the AlsoAsked dataset covering 19.2 million English queries, published by Search Engine Roundtable in September 2026, measured 97% of PAA answers generated by AI in the first week of that month. In August it was 86%, and fourteen months earlier it hovered around 12%. Search Engine Watch put it the same way: Google retired the box’s answers as we knew them, text snippets pulled from web pages.

These are third-party measurements, and that 97% does not mean the box appears in 97% of searches: it means 97% of the answers inside it are AI-generated.

The other change: FAQ rich results are gone

On 7 May 2026 the notice «This feature will no longer appear in Google Search starting May 7, 2026» landed in the FAQ structured data docs; in June the FAQ report and filter were removed from Search Console and in August API support ended, as Search Engine Journal reported.

In practice, markup is not the road to the question box: FAQPage earns no rich results and adding it for a visual result is wasted work. For that ground, start with what rich snippets and schema markup are.

Google’s documentation lags behind the results page

The Visual Elements Gallery still describes a featured snippet when a question expands, while the August and September 2026 measurements say the answer is AI-generated: the docs describe the mechanism, not the state of the results page this month. What the AI features guide does confirm is that to be a supporting link in AI Overviews you only need to be indexed and eligible for a snippet.

What the question box is still good for: where to mine questions

It is good as a corpus of real questions, in the user’s exact wording. It is not a source of guaranteed clicks, and not something you can measure in Search Console. Three sources worth your time:

1. The box itself, expanded. Every question you open generates more questions: walk them in the terms of your business and write down the literal wording, because that becomes the heading.
2. AlsoAsked. It is the specialised PAA tool and the one behind the measurements above; it returns question trees per query and exports them, with a daily cap on the free plan.
3. Search Console, Performance report. Filter queries by question words and cross high impressions with low clicks: those are the questions Google already associates with your site. On reading it, see how to use Google Search Console to improve your SEO.

The step people skip is turning that list into topics and headings, not thirty clone articles: group by intent and keep the question that has no heading in your content yet, leaning on keyword clustering and topical authority.

How to structure content so yours is the answer being used

The question as a heading, the answer first

The question goes in an <h2> or <h3> with an id, in natural language, and right beneath it the direct answer in the first two or three sentences (about 40-60 words). Order matters because the surfaces that extract answers take self-contained blocks: one that opens with «as we said earlier» is not extractable.

<h2 id="how-much-does-an-seo-audit-cost">How much does an SEO audit cost?</h2>
<p>A basic SEO audit costs between X and Y depending on site size.
   The figure depends on the number of URLs, the CMS and whether there is a migration.</p>
<p>After the answer, the detail: what it includes, what it does not and how to compare.</p>

Formats that get extracted

Use the shape that survives being cut out: ordered lists for steps, tables for ranges and decisions, one or two sentence definitions for concepts and figures with a year and a source when the number matters. What gets ignored is predictable: long paragraphs and headings that ask nothing even though they look like questions.

Where to put the FAQ, and why the shortcut is gone

Prefer questions woven into the body, which create headings with intent and enter the section index, over a «Frequently asked questions» block at the end: that one only closes leftover doubts and earns no rich result. Padding with twenty repeated questions to «cover queries» is thin content. It also helps to make the content easy for machines to read, as outlined in making your site agent-ready.

How to measure whether it works (there is no PAA report)

There is no PAA report in Search Console: there are clicks, impressions and average position for the page that answers. Google clarified that interactions with the box are counted in normal page performance data as regular clicks and impressions, as Search Engine Journal documented. PAA, in other words, cannot be isolated.

Three measures remain: the trend of question queries that already bring impressions, a period comparison before and after rewriting an article with question headings, and manual checks of a couple of key queries in incognito, noting whether you show up as a source.

Five PAA myths that refuse to die

1. «Add FAQ schema and you show up in the question box.» It was never a documented path, because PAA is not a rich result, and FAQ rich results have been deprecated since May 2026.
2. «PAA is a Search Console report.» There is no such report; interactions are counted in page data.
3. «The docs say the box shows snippets, so showing a snippet is enough.» The docs describe the mechanism, they do not guarantee today’s format.
4. «Just make the question an h3 and you are done.» Without a direct answer underneath and verifiable data, the heading is decorative.
5. «If my site no longer appears in PAA, I lost SEO.» Google says you cannot control what shows up there; what you do control is the content AI surfaces use as a source.

Checklist: putting the question box to work in 10 steps

1. Search your five key queries and write down the box questions verbatim, expanding each one.
2. Export the question tree for one of those topics from AlsoAsked.
3. Pull question queries with impressions and no clicks from Search Console.
4. Group by intent and drop what an existing article already answers.
5. Pick one question per section, not an FAQ of twenty.
6. Write the direct answer in 40-60 words before the context.
7. Use a table or a list if the answer compares or enumerates.
8. Check that the heading is a real question and appears in the section index.
9. Leave FAQPage as it is and do not add markup expecting a PAA metric in Search Console.
10. Re-check the query a few days later and note whether your content is still the source.

The box stopped being a bag of clicks and became two quieter, more useful things: a free list of what your audience actually asks, and a signal of whether Google uses your content as a source.