What Is People Also Ask: The 2026 Guide

People Also Ask boxes have been a fixture in Google search results since 2015, dynamically surfacing related questions based on a user's initial query. These accordion-style panels sit prominently near the top of SERPs and have become a critical battleground for organic visibility. As of 2026, PAA boxes have evolved significantly under AI Overviews, changing how SEO professionals approach them. This guide explains what PAA is, how it works, and why it still matters.

PAA boxes appear for an estimated 40-60% of search queries, depending on the industry and query type. When a user clicks a question, the box expands to show a snippet answer (usually extracted from a top-ranking page) and a link to that page. Critically, clicking one question often triggers additional related questions, creating an infinite scroll-like experience that keeps users engaged on the SERP itself.

Google generates these questions using a combination of query expansion algorithms, passage indexing, and more recently, large language model (LLM) based question generation. The search giant's BERT and MUM updates significantly improved Google's ability to understand question intent, and the introduction of AI Overviews in 2024 further blurred the line between traditional PAA boxes and generative answers.

Google's AI Overviews (formerly SGE), launched broadly in 2024 and refined throughout 2025, have fundamentally altered the PAA landscape. According to a 2025 study by Search Engine Land, the overlap between PAA questions and AI Overview content exceeds 70% for informational queries (citation: Sullivan, D. "How AI Overviews Are Reshaping Google's People Also Ask Boxes." Search Engine Land, March 2025). This means that appearing in PAA often correlates with being cited in AI Overviews, creating a compounding visibility effect.

However, there is a notable trade-off. For commercial and transactional queries, AI Overviews have reduced PAA click-through rates (CTR) by approximately 15-25% because the overview itself satisfies the user's initial question without requiring a click (citation: Gisele, N. "AI Overviews and PAA: The 2025 Data Analysis." Moz Blog, June 2025). Understanding which queries retain high PAA engagement and which have been cannibalized by AI Overviews is now table stakes for any serious SEO strategy.

PAA boxes, featured snippets (position zero), and AI Overviews serve different but overlapping roles. Featured snippets provide a direct, concise answer pulled from a single page. PAA boxes offer multiple related questions with short excerpts. AI Overviews generate synthesized, multi-source paragraphs with inline citations.

The key distinction is that PAA questions can be a richer source of long-tail keyword opportunities than featured snippets. Each expanded question in a PAA box represents a unique search query, often with measurable search volume. A 2025 analysis by Ahrefs found that PAA questions contain an average of 5.8 words per query, compared to 3.2 words for the average search query, making them ideal for targeting informational long-tail intent (citation: Ahrefs. "People Also Ask: A Data-Driven Analysis." Ahrefs Blog, February 2025).

Despite the AI Overviews disruption, PAA boxes remain valuable for three reasons. First, they appear on a broader range of query types than AI Overviews, which tend to be limited to queries with sufficient informational intent. Second, PAA boxes drive measurable traffic. A well optimized PAA answer can yield CTRs of 8-12%, comparable to positions 1-3 in organic results. Third, PAA data feeds directly into AI Overview content selection. Pages that answer PAA questions with clear, structured data are more likely to be cited in AI Overviews.

1. Sullivan, D. "How AI Overviews Are Reshaping Google's People Also Ask Boxes." Search Engine Land, March 2025.
2. Gisele, N. "AI Overviews and PAA: The 2025 Data Analysis." Moz Blog, June 2025.
3. Ahrefs. "People Also Ask: A Data-Driven Analysis." Ahrefs Blog, February 2025.
4. Google Search Central. "Understanding How AI Overviews Work." Google Developers, 2025.