Google AI Overviews Are Taking Over People Also Ask: Here’s What Marketers Should Know

If People Also Ask is part of your SEO strategy, there’s a pretty significant change worth paying attention to. Google is increasingly using AI Overviews to answer questions appearing in People Also Ask (PAA) results, transforming a familiar SERP feature into another part of its AI-powered search experience.

People Also Ask has long been useful for understanding what searchers want to know, identifying related keywords and earning additional visibility in search results. Now, Google is increasingly using generative AI to provide those answers directly.

In other words: PAA isn’t disappearing, but it is becoming an AI-powered search feature. For marketers, that could change both how we think about PAA optimization and what makes question-based content valuable.

AI Overviews Now Appear in Nearly All PAA Results

The shift toward AI-generated People Also Ask answers has happened quickly. According to data from AlsoAsked reported by Search Engine Roundtable, AI Overviews appeared in 97% of English-language PAA answers sampled during the first week of September. The analysis included 19.2 million PAA results from 2026.

Just one month earlier, that number was approximately 86%. Around 14 months ago, AI Overviews appeared in only about 12% of PAA answers. That means AI-generated responses have gone from a relatively limited presence within PAA to the dominant format in a little over a year.

The questions themselves still look familiar. Search for a topic and Google may display several related questions that users can expand to learn more. What’s changed is how Google provides the answer. Traditionally, expanding a PAA question would surface an excerpt from a webpage, along with a link to the source. Now, Google can use generative AI to synthesize an answer using information from multiple sources.

For marketers, that distinction matters.

Why People Also Ask Has Mattered for SEO

PAA has traditionally offered marketers two particularly useful opportunities. 

The first is insight into search intent. Search for a broad keyword and Google may surface questions about costs, benefits, comparisons, problems or next steps. Those questions can provide a quick look at what else people want to know about a topic. That’s made PAA a useful source for keyword research, content planning and FAQ development.

The second opportunity has been additional SERP visibility. A webpage didn’t necessarily have to occupy the top organic position to appear as the source of a PAA answer. A clear, relevant response to a related question could potentially earn another prominent spot in the search results, but AI-generated answers complicate that model.

If Google can synthesize a response using information from multiple sources, simply providing a concise answer to a common question may no longer create the same opportunity for visibility or clicks. But that doesn’t necessarily make PAA less useful. Instead, marketers may need to rethink what they do with the questions it surfaces.

Answering the Question May No Longer Be Enough

Google’s growing use of AI within PAA reflects a broader shift already happening across Search: Straightforward information can increasingly be delivered directly on the results page.

Consider someone searching, “What is content marketing?”

Hundreds of websites can provide a technically accurate definition. Google can now synthesize information from those sources into a concise response without requiring the user to visit any individual page. 

For marketers, that raises an important question: What does your content offer after the basic question has been answered? That could be original research, proprietary data, expert commentary, detailed examples, firsthand experience or a distinctive perspective on the topic. These elements give users something beyond the information an AI-generated summary can easily provide.

That doesn’t mean marketers should stop answering basic questions. Clear, direct answers still help readers and provide important context for search engines. But increasingly, the answer itself may need to be the starting point rather than the entire value proposition of a page.

PAA Could Still Be a Valuable Research Tool

There’s another side to this change, though. Even if AI-generated responses affect the traditional visibility opportunity associated with PAA, the questions themselves can still reveal a lot about search behavior.

People Also Ask frequently shows how users move from a broad topic toward more specific concerns. Someone researching a service, for example, might begin by asking what it is before moving on to questions about cost, benefits, alternatives or implementation. Those relationships can help marketers better understand the search journey and identify gaps in existing content.

Rather than creating a separate page for every PAA question, marketers can use those questions to strengthen broader content. They might inform supporting sections within an article, FAQs, related resources or deeper pieces addressing more complex search intent.

That approach could become even more valuable as Google gets better at answering simple informational questions itself. If AI can easily provide the basic answer, marketers have more reason to address the questions that come next.

AI Is Becoming Part of Everyday Google Search

The PAA shift also shows just how deeply generative AI is becoming integrated into Google Search. AI Overviews already provide generated responses for many queries, while AI Mode lets users explore topics conversationally and ask follow-up questions.

Now, AI is becoming part of another familiar Google feature rather than sitting in a separate experimental experience. For marketers, that means traditional organic rankings may increasingly tell only part of the story. A brand could rank organically, appear as a source within an AI-generated response or surface elsewhere as someone continues exploring a topic. That makes it increasingly important to consider overall search visibility alongside traditional rankings and organic traffic.

What Marketers Should Focus On Now

There’s no reason to abandon PAA research or suddenly overhaul every FAQ on your website. Instead, this change reinforces several fundamentals that are becoming increasingly important as AI reshapes the search experience:

• Continue using PAA questions to understand search intent and identify content gaps.
• Answer important questions clearly, but give readers a reason to keep exploring your content.
• Incorporate original research, examples, expert perspectives and firsthand experience where possible.
• Build comprehensive resources rather than creating thin pages around individual questions.
• Monitor how your brand and content appear across both traditional and AI-generated search experiences.

Most importantly, avoid optimizing exclusively for one AI feature. Google Search is changing quickly, and the way AI Overviews, PAA and other SERP features work will likely continue to evolve. Creating genuinely useful content remains a more durable strategy than trying to reverse-engineer exactly how Google generates a particular answer.

People Also Ask Is Changing, but Search Intent Isn’t

The rapid growth of AI-generated People Also Ask answers is another sign of how deeply generative AI is becoming integrated into Google Search. For marketers, it may change the value of simply being the webpage that provides the answer. But it doesn’t change the underlying reason PAA has always been useful: It shows us what people want to know.

Those questions can still reveal audience concerns, content gaps and opportunities throughout the search journey. The opportunity now is to use those insights to create content that goes beyond the answer Google can generate on its own – and gives searchers a reason to keep reading.