Google now writes 13% of its own ‘People Also Ask’ answers – what marketers need to know

July 11, 2025 Posted by Sean Walsh Round-Up 0 thoughts on “Google now writes 13% of its own ‘People Also Ask’ answers – what marketers need to know”
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Sean Walsh
Director at Intelligency

Sean is a Director at Intelligency heading up our digital marketing and client services operations. Sean has 15+ years experiencing working both in-house and agency with brands including Lloyds, Alstom, Hitachi, Lufthansa, Viaplay, DFDS Seaways and Mercedes-Benz.

New data shows that around 13% of the answers in Google’s “People Also Ask” boxes are written by Google’s AI, not pulled from websites. This change could affect how much traffic your content gets from search, but it also points to new opportunities.

What is the People Also Ask box?

When you search on Google, you often see a drop-down box with related questions such as:
“People also ask: What is X? How does it work?”

This feature helps users dig deeper into a topic without doing new searches. When someone clicks a question, Google shows an answer, usually taken from a third-party website, with a link to that page.

Why it matters for marketers:

  • It’s a valuable source of organic traffic, especially for informational content (like blog posts or service pages).
  • Being featured in these answers helps build visibility and authority for your brand in search results.
  • It often appears high on the page, sometimes even before standard links, so ranking here gives you prime real estate.

What are Google AI Overviews?

AI Overviews are summaries that Google generates using artificial intelligence. Instead of linking to a website, Google’s AI tries to answer the question directly, based on what it has learned from scanning the web.

You’ll often see these appear at the very top of a results page, especially for more complex or multi-part questions.

  • These AI answers can replace or push down traditional links in search results.
  • If Google answers a user’s question directly, they may never click through to your website, which can hurt your traffic.
  • At the same time, they give clues about what information Google thinks is missing, and that’s a signal you can use to shape your content.

What’s happening now?

An analysis of over 8.4 million English-language “People Also Ask” results found that 12.6% of answers are now AI-generated, rather than pulled from existing web pages. That’s according to Mark Williams-Cook, founder of SEO tool Also Asked.

This shift impacts both SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) and content marketing.

  • Less visibility: If Google’s AI answers a question, fewer people may click through to your site even if you’ve written great content.
  • New opportunities: If AI is stepping in, it likely means no page fully answered the question. This shows where you could step in and create a better, more complete piece of content.

When did this start?

Google began inserting AI-generated answers into People Also Ask boxes in November 2024. This is the first large-scale data showing how common it has become. What should you do about it?

  • Review your content: Are you answering key questions clearly and completely?
  • Fill content gaps: Use tools like Also Asked or Answer the Public to find what users want to know, then answer it better than AI can.

Google is changing how it delivers answers using AI to fill in where it sees gaps. For marketers, this is both a warning sign and an opportunity. If you can produce the most helpful, complete content, you still have a chance to earn visibility even in an AI-first search world.

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