People Also Ask (PAA)
Definition: People Also Ask is a Google results feature listing related questions that expand to show a short answer from a web page, with more questions loading as users open them.
Also called: PAA, related questions
Updated
A research tool first
The most reliable use of People Also Ask is not as a traffic source but as free research. The questions show how people phrase the next thing they want to know after their original search. Open a few and new ones load, which quickly maps the sub-questions around a topic.
That is close to what query fan-out does inside AI search: one question becomes several related ones. A page that answers the PAA questions for its topic usually covers the sub-queries an AI system is likely to run.
A quick routine:
- Search your main topic and open four or five PAA questions.
- Copy every question that appears, then group them by intent.
- Answer each group in a section of your page, with the question as the heading.
How answers are chosen
PAA answers are excerpts from web pages, selected much like featured snippets. There is no markup to request a place. Pages that answer the question directly under a matching heading are the usual source.
Limits worth knowing
- Whether a PAA box appears, and which questions it shows, varies by query, location, device and time.
- Clicks from PAA are modest; many people read the excerpt and move on.
- FAQ markup does not help. Google says FAQ rich results stopped appearing in May 2026 (documentation updates), and PAA never depended on that markup in the first place.
The AEO vs SEO guide shows how PAA research fits into an answer-first content plan.