What happened to People Also Ask? If it looks different to you lately, you are not imagining it. The box hasn’t gone away, and its questions still come from real searches. What changed is mostly what you get when you open a question, and what sits around the box. Google hasn’t announced these changes in one place, so this page pieces together what has been reported and what we have seen in our own harvests. It is part of our guide to Google SERP features.
The answers became AI Overviews
This is the big one. Google’s own documentation still says that when you expand a People Also Ask question, you are “shown a featured snippet”: an extract from one page, with a link to it. That was true for years. It is no longer what most people see.
The change came in stages, tracked closely by Search Engine Roundtable:
- November 2024. Search Engine Roundtable reported that Google was testing “AI Overviews and generative AI results directly in the people also ask section”.
- July 2025. AlsoAsked’s Mark Williams-Cook reported that 12.6% of PAA answers were AI-generated.
- October 2025. The figure had reached 38% of English queries, more than double in three months.
- August to September 2026. AlsoAsked found 86% in August and 97% in the first week of September, from a sample of 19.2 million English-language queries. Another tool, Allintitle, put it at 100%.
These numbers come from tools, not Google, and samples differ. But every source points the same way. Our own harvests on 27 September 2026 fit the picture: the answers read like AI summaries, with source labels such as a site name followed by “+1”, and most credited several sites rather than one.
Fewer plain links, more blended sources
A common complaint is that PAA has fewer simple, clickable links than it used to. Here is what we can say about that.
The old format gave each answer one source: one page, one link, easy to click. An AI-generated answer summarizes several pages and credits them together. In our harvests, sources often appeared as labels inside the answer text. If you used PAA to find a page to read, that can feel like fewer links, even when more sites are credited.
The search links around the answers have changed too. In November 2024, users reported that the “more results” button under PAA answers was missing for some of them. A later update to the same report said PAA then showed a new search query after answering the question. Google did not confirm either as a permanent change, and different people saw different versions. We found no Google announcement on this, so treat it as what users reported, not as policy.
AI Mode moved in next door
Google has also been testing AI Mode in and around the box. In June 2025, Search Engine Roundtable reported that Google was testing AI Mode within People Also Ask, including a variation reading “Ask anything in AI Mode”. One reader saw “Explore further in AI Mode” where PAA would normally be. Those were tests, and you may or may not see them. Together with AI Overviews at the top of the page, they make the area around PAA more AI-led than it was.
None of this means PAA is being replaced. The box still appears on many searches, and its questions are still the same kind of real searches they always were. What is changing is the space around it, and how much of the answer Google writes itself.
For how the two features differ, see the difference between People Also Ask and AI Overviews.
What didn’t change
- The questions. They still come from real searches people have typed. The AI part is the answers. We go into this in is People Also Ask AI?
- The growing box. Opening a question still loads more questions below it.
- No off switch. Google still has no setting to hide it, though there are ways to get rid of People Also Ask on your own screen.
Did PAA disappear for you?
PAA has never shown on every search, so a missing box is usually a filter, an extension or a Google test rather than a removal. The causes and fixes are in why People Also Ask isn’t working.
What it means for you
As a searcher, check the answers. AI summaries can be wrong, and blended sources make it harder to see who said what. Open the credited pages before relying on an answer. Our page on how accurate Google’s AI Overviews are has more.
As a site owner, the goal has shifted from being the one snippet to being one of the sources Google cites. Google says there are no special requirements for AI features beyond being indexed and eligible for a snippet. Our guides to featured snippets and ranking in People Also Ask cover what you can control. And since snippets still exist, the same groundwork serves both.
As a researcher, the questions are as useful as ever. To see the full box and its answers for a topic, PAA Box, our free Chrome extension, opens every question in your own Chrome and exports them to CSV. PAA Box Pro also saves Google’s answer and source for each, so you can see which sites get cited. More on the box itself in our guide to People Also Ask.