Google people also ask boxes not showing as often now?
The folks at RankRanger are reporting that the people also ask box is showing up for 40% of queries, when just a week ago, it was showing for 52% of queries. That is a 12-point reduction and a big change. Moz is also showing a big drop in this feature showing up in Google search.
People also ask. This is a box has become incredibly common to see in the search results. We had an article about the explosion of people also ask[1] in Google search. But now it seems like Google may be reversing course. Here is what the people also ask box looks like:
The charts. Here are charts from RankRanger and Moz showing the decline. Both companies measure different query sets and may define “related questions” differently but both show a decline.
What was impacted? Mordy Oberstein from RankRanger said the most affected areas were product, service, and local keywords.
Why we care. If Google is showing fewer people also ask features and your site or industry is impacted by this change, it might lead you to change your strategy slightly. Optimizing for the people also ask features may not be worthwhile going forward, maybe. This might be a temporary change or not – so it is hard to say. We recommend you keep an eye on this for your website, and see what changes you might make if this change does not reverse itself.
About The Author
Barry Schwartz a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick[2], a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable[3], a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics. Barry’s personal blog is named Cartoon Barry[4] and he can be followed on Twitter here.
References
- ^ explosion of people also ask (searchengineland.com)
- ^ RustyBrick (www.rustybrick.com)
- ^ Search Engine Roundtable (www.seroundtable.com)
- ^ Cartoon Barry (www.barryschwartz.org)
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