People Also Ask (PAA) is a Google search feature that shows an expandable list of related questions inside the results page, each with a short answer pulled from a ranking page and a link to read more.
It’s also one of the most common features on a retail SERP. In the GrowByData Retail Industry Panel, People Also Ask appeared on 65% of tracked search results between January and May 2026, ahead of AI Overviews at 60%.
This guide covers how often People Also Ask shows up, how that differs by category and device, how visible it is on the page, and who supplies the answers. Then come seven steps to earn a spot in the box, and how to track it.
Key findings: 65% of tracked retail SERPs showed People Also Ask
- People Also Ask appeared on 65% of tracked SERP checks, against 60% for AI Overviews.
- On mobile it appeared on 69% of checks against 55% for AI Overviews. On desktop, AI Overviews were slightly ahead, 64% to 62%.
- 8.9% of People Also Ask listings sat above the fold, against 2.5% of AI Overview listings.
- YouTube and Reddit together supplied about 18% of People Also Ask listings.
In this guide: 2026 data | Why it matters | 7 steps | Tracking
What is People Also Ask in Google?
People Also Ask grows as you use it. Each time you open a question, Google reveals its answer and loads more related questions, so the box can run well past what’s visible at first.
Answers come in a few formats: paragraphs of text, bullet lists and video. Below each answer, Google links to the page it pulled the answer from. Google builds the list from its algorithm, what people search for and how topics relate to each other, so the questions you see track the intent behind the original search.
It’s one of several Google SERP features that compete for space above and around the organic results.
How often does People Also Ask show up in 2026?
People Also Ask appeared on 65% of the tracked retail SERPs in the GrowByData Retail Industry Panel between January 1 and May 31, 2026. Google AI Overviews appeared on 60%. The panel covers 396,922 tracked SERP checks across eight retail categories, in U.S. search locations.
Presence by category
Share of tracked SERP checks showing each feature, by retail category. Source: GrowByData Retail Industry Panel, January 1 to May 31, 2026.
The gap isn’t uniform. Beauty and personal care had the highest People Also Ask presence at 96%, and apparel the lowest at 45%. People Also Ask was ahead of AI Overviews in seven of the eight categories and level with it in books, music and video, at 77% each.
Home furnishings (53%), toys and hobby (46%) and apparel (45%) all sat below the 65% average. In those categories, the box showed on fewer than six in ten tracked searches.
Presence by device
Device changes the picture. On mobile, People Also Ask appeared on 69% of tracked checks against 55% for AI Overviews, and it led in all eight categories. On desktop the two were close, with AI Overviews slightly ahead at 64% against 62%.
Share of tracked SERP checks showing each feature, by device. Source: GrowByData Retail Industry Panel, January 1 to May 31, 2026.
On desktop, AI Overviews were ahead in four categories: home furnishings, apparel, toys and hobby, and books, music and video. Home furnishings showed the widest desktop gap, at 58% for AI Overviews against 49% for People Also Ask. The table has every category and device.
| Category | PAA, desktop | AI Overviews, desktop | PAA, mobile | AI Overviews, mobile |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Beauty and personal care | 95.1% | 88.7% | 96.7% | 76.2% |
| Computers and consumer electronics | 77.4% | 76.2% | 84.5% | 69.4% |
| Food and beverage | 77.8% | 73.9% | 81.4% | 69.8% |
| Books, music and video | 74.4% | 78.9% | 80.0% | 75.0% |
| Office equipment and supplies | 55.2% | 53.5% | 64.0% | 48.4% |
| Home furnishings | 49.2% | 57.8% | 57.9% | 43.1% |
| Toys and hobby | 42.8% | 46.2% | 50.3% | 40.8% |
| Apparel | 41.1% | 47.9% | 49.6% | 36.8% |
Share of tracked SERP checks showing each feature, by category and device. Source: GrowByData Retail Industry Panel, January 1 to May 31, 2026.
If your audience skews mobile, People Also Ask is the larger of the two surfaces in this data. If it skews desktop, give AI Overviews equal attention. Our guide to AI search visibility covers the second half.
Placement above the fold
Placement is the second measure, and it’s counted differently from presence. Presence is the share of tracked SERP checks that contain the feature. The above-the-fold rate is the share of individual listings, meaning single results inside the feature, that appeared above the fold.
Over the same period, 8.9% of People Also Ask listings appeared above the fold, against 2.5% of AI Overview listings. This isn’t the share of People Also Ask boxes above the fold.
Share of feature listings above the fold, by month. Source: GrowByData Retail Industry Panel, January 1 to May 31, 2026.
The gap held every month. People Also Ask ranged from 7.9% to 11.0% of listings above the fold, and AI Overviews from 1.7% to 3.3%.
Placement also varies by category, and not in step with presence. Food and beverage had the highest share of People Also Ask listings above the fold at 15.5%, followed by books, music and video at 13.8%. Home furnishings had the lowest at 4.3%, with apparel at 5.0%.
Share of People Also Ask listings above the fold, by category. Source: GrowByData Retail Industry Panel, January 1 to May 31, 2026.
Read presence and placement together. Food and beverage pairs 80% presence with the best placement of any category. Beauty has the highest presence at 96%, but its placement, at 9.6%, sits close to the average. Apparel is low on both, and home furnishings has middling presence (53%) with the lowest placement.
Who supplies the answers
The box doesn’t only show your competitors’ pages. Across the five months, YouTube supplied about 12% of all People Also Ask listings in the panel and Reddit about 6%. The 15 largest domains together supplied about 29%.
Share of People Also Ask listings by domain, January and May 2026. Source: GrowByData Retail Industry Panel, January 1 to May 31, 2026.
The chart compares January with May, so its figures differ from the five-month totals above. Reddit’s share rose from 4.6% of listings in January to 7.4% in May, while YouTube’s fell from 12.9% to 9.6% and Quora’s from 2.4% to 0.4%. Monthly shares swing, so read the direction as a signal, not a trend line.
Step 7 covers what to do about it.
How we measured it, and what it doesn’t show
The data comes from the GrowByData Retail Industry Panel: eight retail categories (home furnishings, apparel, beauty and personal care, food and beverage, toys and hobby, computers and consumer electronics, office equipment and supplies, and books, music and video), U.S. search locations, January 1 to May 31, 2026. A tracked SERP check is one capture of a tracked keyword’s results page.
Three limits apply. The panel covers tracked keywords only, not all searches. It covers retail, so other industries will differ. And it measures presence and placement, not clicks, which depend on the query and the layout around the feature. Check your own Search Console data before you set a traffic target for People Also Ask.
SEE YOUR PAA COVERAGE
Book a demo or an audit to see which of your tracked keywords trigger People Also Ask and AI Overviews in your chosen markets and devices.
Why People Also Ask matters for SEO
People Also Ask gives a page a second way to appear on a SERP. It isn’t a guaranteed traffic source, and the 2026 data above is about visibility, not clicks. Still, there are five reasons it deserves attention.
1. Reach searchers earlier in the buying journey
People working through the questions are often still researching. A short, clear answer puts your brand in front of them before they’ve narrowed their options. That makes People Also Ask a natural fit for the top of your keyword funnel.
2. Keep an eye on how your brand is described
Branded searches sit near the bottom of the funnel, where an unflattering or outdated answer costs the most. The box can include answers from sources other than you, as the domain data above shows. Checking what it says under your brand terms, and answering those questions clearly on your own site, is worth the effort.
3. Gain additional SERP visibility beyond your organic listing
Unlike a Featured Snippet, a People Also Ask answer doesn’t replace your standard result. A page can hold an organic listing and a People Also Ask answer on the same SERP. For smaller sites, the box is another route to impressions.
4. Learn answer formats that also suit Featured Snippets
A Featured Snippet takes one slot per SERP, while People Also Ask can list many questions on the same page. Writing for the box means practicing the same short, direct answer format, so the work can inform your approach to Google Featured Snippets as well.
5. Spot content gaps
Questions that keep appearing in the box for your keywords, and that your pages don’t answer, are content gaps. SEO intelligence can show which of your keywords trigger the box, which is where that gap analysis starts.
How to optimize for People Also Ask in 7 steps
These steps are standard SEO practice applied to question-led searches. Where our 2026 data helps you decide what to do, we point to it. For the wider toolkit, see our guide to SERP feature optimization.
1. Find the keywords that trigger the box
List the keywords you target and check which ones show People Also Ask, on mobile and desktop separately. Then prioritize. The box isn’t equally common everywhere: it appeared on 96% of tracked beauty and personal care SERPs but only 45% of apparel SERPs.
Start where the box is common and where your pages don’t yet appear in it. A competitive SERP analysis shows which of those keywords you’re missing from.
2. Match the intent behind each question
The related questions in the box often drift from the original search, from a definition to a comparison, or from a comparison to a how-to. Decide which intent each question carries before you write the answer: definition, comparison, cost or process. Then answer that intent first.
3. Structure the page so each answer is easy to lift
Put each target question in a heading and answer it in the first one or two sentences, then add the detail.
Check that the answer is on the page at all. Plenty of pages cover a topic without ever stating the answer outright. Keep the heading structure clean and consistent, and fix any markup errors that stop the page from rendering as intended.
4. Find recurring questions across PAA, search trends and communities
Use the box itself, Google Trends and communities such as Reddit to collect the questions people ask around your topic. If the same question turns up under many of your keywords, it deserves a clear answer of its own.
Questions you find this way are also a good reason to revisit older pages, since an updated answer on an existing page is often quicker than a new article.
5. Cover related concepts and follow-up questions
Because the box expands into follow-up questions, answering the first one isn’t enough. Cover the related concepts a reader would ask next, on the same page or on linked pages. Your keyword research should note which primary keywords trigger the box and which phrases come up inside it.
6. Write each answer so it stands alone, and don’t rely on FAQ markup
Google has stopped showing FAQ rich results in Search, according to its structured data documentation. Don’t rely on FAQ markup to earn People Also Ask visibility.
The content does the work. Phrase the question as a heading, answer it directly, then add the detail. Keep each answer short enough to be lifted without the paragraph around it, and answer questions on the page where they belong, not only in a separate FAQ block.
7. Earn answers beyond your own pages, starting with YouTube and Reddit
YouTube and Reddit together supplied about 18% of People Also Ask listings in the panel. For a retail query, the answer in the box is often a video or a thread, not a brand’s page.
Publish short video answers titled with the question, and state the answer early in both the video and its description. Take part in relevant Reddit discussions as a named, transparent brand voice, and follow each community’s rules.
Treat this as an addition to the first six steps, not a replacement. We haven’t measured the effect of any single tactic here, and whether a video or thread earns a spot depends on the query.
How to track People Also Ask performance
Tracking People Also Ask comes down to three questions: which of your keywords trigger the box, whether it shows up in the locations and on the devices you care about, and how that changes week to week.
Our Search Intelligence platform includes enterprise SERP tracking, which monitors each component of the results page by search intent, category and region. GrowByData Compass tracks People Also Ask as one of the SERP features it monitors, alongside AI Overviews, Featured Snippets and Shopping results, across your chosen markets and devices.
For location-level checks, see local and international SERP monitoring. For the method, see our guide on how to track SERP features. To see why feature presence isn’t the same thing as a ranking position, read SERP monitoring vs rank tracking.
Presence tracking and click tracking come from different sources. Compass shows whether and where People Also Ask appears for your keywords. Search Console shows the clicks and CTR on your own pages. To judge the effect on organic CTR, look at the two together. For a competitive view of the same keywords, start with Google share of voice.
Conclusion: why People Also Ask still matters for SEO
People Also Ask is still a common, well-placed feature on retail SERPs. It showed on 65% of tracked results in early 2026, led AI Overviews on mobile by 69% to 55%, and a larger share of its listings sat above the fold than AI Overview listings did.
It’s a visibility surface you can measure and improve. Whether it drives clicks for you is a question for your own Search Console data. Use the seven steps as the work, and track coverage as the scoreboard.
See where you stand in People Also Ask
Compass shows which of your tracked keywords trigger People Also Ask and AI Overviews across your chosen markets and devices. Book a demo or an audit to see it for your keywords.
