People Also Ask = People Stop Visiting

[bpmee]

"People Also Ask" is a brutal double-edged sword for SEOs.

Pros
1. Sneak into top 3-5 spots by answering a common FAQ.
2. Potentially entice people to visit your site to learn more about more complex topics.
3. Low barrier to entry: basic research, FAQ markup, aren't too complicated.
4. Compete with larger sites.

Cons
1. Customers satisfied with your PAA answer may not visit the page (yours) that helped them. They move on to another search.
2. Google free-rides on your work without compensation. (This has always happened, but more so now)
3. Common KW searches that previously produced customers now less potent. The PAA answer keeps them on Google.
4. Many PAA aren't actually that good and require more context than a quick 1-2 sentence response.
5. Authority and brand matter - your site must be fairly authoritative to get PAA placements.

Unknowns
1. How Google calculates PAA "bounce rates" and "interaction" - Do certain answers from certain sites do better than others?
2. How many potential click-thrus are lost when PAA is present in a SERP?
3. Weed out process for irrelevant or poor quality answers.
4. Do positive (negative) PAA interactions increase (decrease) a site's other SERPs? In other words, do good answers improve the site's profile like a good bounce rate?

I don't care for PAA in general, particularly for Gambling SERPS. Here's an imaginary example and how PAA could affect a site:

You write an article about when to double down in Blackjack. Included are a basic strategy chart and some explanation for less common situations. You carefully explain why it's important to double down, particularly when it seems counterintuitive.

Before PAA, someone searching for "blackjack double down" or "when to double down in blackjack" would visit your page. They'd skim your through article, get the basics, and maybe learn something new. Hopefully they'd visit one of your partner casinos.

After PAA, you'll never see some of these people. A competitor will answer "When to double down?" with a simple "Always double on 11 except against a dealer Ace and on 10 if the dealer has x,y,z cards, and on 9 when x,y,z".

Now, neither you nor the competitor are actually rewarded for the hard work creating truly useful blackjack content. My guess is about half of your potential visitors read the PAA answer and search for something else.

Also worth noting that doubling down depends on the game rules. Meaning the differences between traditional vs. Spanish blackjack dictate their own set of decisions. Does Google know the difference? More importantly, wouldn't it be better to defer this particular answer to a knowledgeable website instead of PAA?

Conclusion

PAA presents some opportunities and challenges, but I can't help but wonder how many visitors remain on Google instead of visiting the site that answered the question.

PAA is NOT helpful for more complex and nuanced topics. However, it could be a hook for those. Even some gambling topics need more than a quick and dirty 2 sentence answer. That's where the opportunity is.

The question is whether or not your customers will ever get off Google to visit your site?

[universal4]

Thanks for a detailed explanation of your thoughts on the "People Also Ask" as it shows an even larger reason why a single search engine should not have such a monopoly on search.

Google doesn't care about you, or sending you visitors.

Google only wants you to create content, that answers a searcher's question, in a clear and concise way, so they can use your content to answer the searcher's question, AT GOOGLE so they do not have to send you the visitor.

Rick
Universal4

[bpmee]

Google doesn't care about you, or sending you visitors.

Yep. The shift to "Google Web" began many years ago.

For the record, Bing is even worse with their "Magazine" style SERPS. 3-4 organic results are flanked by their own version of PAA with 6-8 unrelated videos, and of course multiple paid results that are both irrelevant and poorly notated.

My concern about search moving to TikTok, Twitter, or other social media platforms is that they have little to no quality assessment in place. It is truly a mob rule scene where popularity and click bait rule the day.

At least with Google *most* top 10s, *most* of the time have results that should be there, even if there are others that deserve to be there, too.

[chaumi]

That's an excellent appraisal of the situation, bpmee.

It's hard to judge just how many searchers do stop at a PAA answer, take it as a valid/accurate answer to their query, and go no further. The reality is we're never going to have access to the data that shows that one way or the other.

fwiw my own view is that a PAA that looks like it's got a good answer will still attract the click because a searcher will want to see the full context surrounding it on the page (depending on the query, of course). I'd be pretty sure that's one of the reasons G were highlighting the passages on page...though a couple I just tried didn't highlight anywhere that I could see. Maybe they have changed that approach, maybe it was just my searches.

The bigger worry comes if/when they stop showing the originating page link completely.

But, either way, this is one of those where it's a case of 'don't worry about things you can't influence'....(sometimes easier said than done, I know, depending on what those 'things' are). And, if you take that view, then the next step is working out how/if you can extract some advantage from it.

[Branchen]

This is an interesting point.

It is true that Google doesn't care about how much traffic they sent us. They have made several features over the years that steals away the traffic from the websites that provide them their content.

I remember ranking on football terms such as 'livescore' 'standings' and similar during the World Cup in 2018, and then a week or two into the tournament, Google added a livescore at the top for when people searched for those terms, which had me lose all traffic lol.