“People Also Ask” Provides New Opportunity To Rank At Top Of SEPRs Multiple Times

As some of you may know, back in Nov 2014. John Mueller alluded to the fact that if your site contains content in tabs or it needs to clicked to be expanded that that content may not get indexed becauase Google is not crawling it. This was revealed to Barry Schwartz in a Google+ Hangout. In short, Mueller said content within “click to expand” menus or “tabs” may be “discounted” since Google knows you are hiding it from users.

Recently Google has begun to test “People Also Ask” in their SERPs. The results are very attractive and are quite helpful. However, it is “Click To Expand” content. But this is ok for Google to do right?

Google People Also Ask Desktop 1

Google People Also Ask Desktop 2

Searches Related To

As you can see, this is similar to the “Searches Related To” you see at the bottom of the search results. What’s interesting in that the “Searches Related To” are simply similar search queries whereas the “People Also Ask” seems to be related to semantic search. You can see that the “People Also Ask” options are complete questions like “Is it cheaper to ship UPS or USPS?” or “Who is USPS?” Google is trying to show very specific answers to very specific questions.

Google Searches Related To Desktop

Google Stealing Organic Traffic

In the past many people have been concerned and complained that Google is scarping content from other sites and that this is “stealing” organic traffic.

Himanshu of OptimizeSmart has a wonderful point:

Ranking Multiple Times In “People Also Ask” Box

I guess there is a positive spin that can be put on this situation. What if you were able to rank for multiple “People Also Ask” drop-down suggestions? For example, FedEx has two results in the “People Also Ask” box.

People Also Ask FedEx

Here are some mobile screen shots as well.

People Also Ask Mobile 1
People Also Ask Mobile 2

About Dani Owens

Dani Owens, the owner of Pigzilla, has been in the digital marketing field since 2011. Her resources have been mentioned and shared by local SEO experts such as Eric Ward, Darren Shaw, Phil Rozek, Marie Haynes, David Mihm and Local U. From small, independent Mom-and-Pop shops, to enterprises with thousands of locations, Dani Owens has years of experience strategizing and implementing reliable local SEO tactics that lead to increased organic traffic and conversions.