This was literally the first question Google showed us. On 27 September 2026 we harvested the People Also Ask box for the search “people also ask”, and question number one was “How to get rid of people also ask on Google?”. Google’s own answer, credited to Matteo Mazzarolo’s blog, opened with the honest part: “You cannot turn off the ‘People Also Ask’ (PAA) box using native Google settings.” So the box admits it has no off switch. It can still be hidden, and a couple of the ways are clean.
There is no off switch, and Google says so
Google has no setting or toggle for People Also Ask. Its help page on AI Overviews states the general rule plainly: AI Overviews are “a core Google Search feature, like knowledge panels”, and “Features cannot be turned off.” People Also Ask is the same kind of built-in feature. What Google offers instead is a way to see plain links only, called the Web filter, and it happens to be the best tool for this job too.
The fixes below come in two kinds. The Web filter and the udm=14 trick ask Google for a different results page, one that never includes the box. Blocker rules and extensions let Google send the normal page, then hide the box inside your browser. Neither kind changes what anyone else sees.
Your options at a glance
| Option | Where it works | What else disappears | Sticks between searches? |
|---|---|---|---|
| Click the Web filter | Any browser, desktop or mobile | AI Overviews and other non-link features | No, one search at a time |
Make udm=14 your default search | Chrome and other browsers with custom search engines; Safari through an app | Same as the Web filter | Yes |
| Blocker rule (uBlock Origin or uBlock Origin Lite) | Desktop Chrome; Firefox on desktop and Android | Only what the rule targets | Yes, until Google changes its code |
| Extension built to hide PAA | Chrome desktop | Depends on the extension | Yes, if the extension is maintained |
| Another search engine | Everywhere | Google’s results | Yes |
Option 1: Click the Web filter
Google launched the Web filter in May 2024. Its Search Liaison account described it as a filter “that shows only text-based links”, the same way you might filter for images or videos (Search Engine Roundtable, 15 May 2024). According to TechCrunch (14 May 2024), it sits at the top of the results with the other filters, or inside the “More” menu.
We checked that it still does the job. On 27 September 2026 we searched “how to get rid of people also ask” and “what is seo” on Google (US, English, desktop Chrome), first normally, then with the Web filter. Both normal pages had a People Also Ask box. Both Web pages had no People Also Ask box and no “People also search for” list, and the AI Overview on “what is seo” was gone too.
- Search on Google as usual.
- Find the row of filters under the search box (All, Images, Videos, News and so on).
- Click Web. If it isn’t in the row, open More and pick it there.
The catch is that it’s a filter, not a preference. Searches you start from your browser’s address bar still land on the normal All view. You also lose everything that isn’t a plain link, which Google’s help page describes as “only text-based links without features like AI Overviews”. For most people who want the box gone, that’s the point. If you like the image strip or the map, you’ll miss them.
Option 2: Make udm=14 your default search
The Web filter is really a URL parameter. Add &udm=14 to a Google results address and you get the Web view. Ernie Smith of Tedium documented this days after launch (Tedium, 17 May 2024) and built udm14.com, a simple search page that sends you to Google with the parameter already set. The useful move is to make it your browser’s default, so every search from the address bar opens the Web view with no box.
In Chrome on a computer
These steps follow Google’s Chrome Help page on search engines.
- Open Chrome, click More (the three dots, top right), then Settings.
- Choose Search engine, then Manage search engines and site search.
- Next to Site search, click Add.
- Fill in the three fields. Search engine: a name such as “Google Web”. Shortcut: something short, such as
gw. URL with %s in place of query:https://www.google.com/search?q=%s&udm=14 - Click Add. Then open the More menu next to your new entry and choose Make default.
Other ways to set it
- Chrome extension: &udm=14 adds the parameter to your Google searches and lets you toggle it. Its store listing showed 40,000 users and an update in September 2026 when we checked on 27 September 2026.
- Safari on iPhone, iPad and Mac: the free udm14 for Safari app by Andrew Sun redirects Google searches to the Web view once you enable it in Safari’s settings.
If it doesn’t seem to work on your account, udm14.com’s own FAQ suggests switching accounts or trying an incognito window.
Option 3: Hide only the box with a blocker rule
If you want the normal page with everything else intact and just People Also Ask removed, use a content blocker’s custom filter. It’s the most surgical option, and it’s the one Google’s own answer pointed to.
Which blocker you use depends on your browser. Chrome turned off Manifest V2 extensions everywhere on 24 July 2025, according to Chrome’s own timeline, and the uBlock Origin project page lists the classic extension as removed from the Chrome Web Store. In Chrome, use uBlock Origin Lite; its FAQ says custom filters were added in June 2026. In Firefox, on desktop or Android, the full uBlock Origin still runs.
The rule we’d start with:
google.com##div[data-initq]
Here’s why. When we inspected Google’s results on 27 September 2026, the whole People Also Ask box, heading and questions, sat inside one element carrying a data-initq attribute that holds the search you typed. On both result pages we checked, that selector matched the box and nothing else, and hiding it removed the heading and every question. We tested the selector directly in the page, not inside the extensions. It’s plain CSS, so it should work as a cosmetic filter in both, but treat that as our expectation, not a promise.
- uBlock Origin (Firefox): open the dashboard, go to My filters, paste the rule on its own line, click Apply changes, then reload Google.
- uBlock Origin Lite (Chrome): use the custom filter option in the extension’s popup panel and paste the same rule.
You’ll find older rules online. Mazzarolo’s 2022 rule, google.com##div:last-of-type div:has-text(/^People also ask/), matches on the heading text using uBlock Origin’s :has-text syntax. He notes it hides the box only after the page renders, so you may see a brief flash, and that any rule like this needs updating when Google changes the structure of its results page. The same goes for ours.
Option 4: Use an extension built for it
If editing filters isn’t your thing, a few Chrome extensions exist just for this. Details below are from their store listings on 27 September 2026.
- Hide “People Also Asked” Results by Chris Lever SEO does one job: it hides the box. It’s at version 1.0, last updated 25 May 2022, with 2,000 users. Four years is a long time on a page Google keeps changing, so test it before you rely on it.
- Google Search Cleaner by Patrick Bushe has 25 toggles for page elements, last updated 14 March 2026. In his own write-up (28 December 2025) he explains you switch on “Hide People Also Ask” in its settings, and that it hides elements with CSS, so the page doesn’t load any faster.
One caution for any extension that edits Google’s results page: it has to read that page to change it, and that page contains your searches. Check who makes it and what permissions it asks for before you install.
Option 5: Search somewhere else
People Also Ask is Google’s feature, so leaving Google leaves the box behind. The trade is Google’s index for someone else’s. If what really bothers you is AI in search, DuckDuckGo runs noai.duckduckgo.com, which its help pages say turns off Search Assist, Duck.ai and AI-generated images. You’re not alone in looking: TechCrunch reported on 1 June 2026 that traffic to that page tripled on 28 May 2026, after Google’s May 2026 search overhaul.
How do I remove People Also Ask from Google?
Same wish, different words, and Google treats it that way. In our depth pass it showed “How do I remove people also ask from Google?” as a child of the question this page answers. The answer depends on who is asking.
If you’re searching, you can’t remove the box from Google, only from your own screen. The quickest lasting fix is the udm=14 default in Option 2. The most precise is the blocker rule in Option 3.
If you run a website and want your content kept out of the answers, Google does give you controls. The answers in the box used to be featured snippets, which Google’s featured snippets documentation says “can also appear within a related questions group (also known as ‘People Also Ask’)”, and they are now mostly AI Overviews. Google’s guide to AI features lists nosnippet, data-nosnippet, max-snippet and noindex as the ways to limit what’s shown from your pages in Search. Be careful with the blunt ones. Google’s robots meta tag reference says nosnippet means no text snippet in the search results for that page at all, so use data-nosnippet on specific passages if you only want to hold part of a page back. None of this removes the box. It only changes whether your words appear in it.
Is People Also Ask AI?
This is the other question Google hangs under this one. In our depth pass, “Are the people also ask section AI?” appeared as a child of “How to get rid of people also ask on Google?”. When we searched “how to get rid of people also ask” live on 27 September 2026, it was the first question in the box. Our read: a lot of people who want the box gone assume it’s AI.
For the answers, they’re mostly right. Mark Williams-Cook of AlsoAsked shared data on LinkedIn, reported by Search Engine Roundtable on 9 September 2026, showing 97% of People Also Ask answers in the first week of September 2026 were AI Overviews. The questions themselves come from real searches. The full story, including how that differs from the AI Overview at the top of the page, is in Is People Also Ask AI?.
Why the box feels like clutter
Part of the urge to hide it is that the box wanders. In our harvest for “people also ask”, Google revealed 50 questions and only 6 were about People Also Ask itself. The first off-topic one showed up at position 5 (“Can I tell who has googled my name?”), and by position 13 Google was asking “Who is the #1 Googled person?”. We unpack that in why People Also Ask drifts off topic.
Hide it for searching, keep it for research
If you write or do SEO, the box is noise when you’re looking something up and useful when you’re planning content. You can have both. Keep a udm=14 default for everyday searching, and pull the questions on purpose when you need them.
PAA Box is our tool, a Chrome extension that runs on a normal Google results page. It extracts the People Also Ask questions and expands them up to four levels, from D0 (the questions Google already shows) to D3 (all the way), then exports a CSV that keeps each question’s depth and parent. It needs the box on the page, so run it on the All view, not the Web view. It’s live in the Chrome Web Store as BlogStorm: People Also Ask Tool while we finish the rebrand.