People Also Ask is the box of related questions Google shows among its results, each expanding to reveal a short answer taken from a web page, with more questions appearing as you open them. The answers are featured snippets, chosen automatically from pages that answer the question directly. You cannot apply for a place; you can write pages that are easy to choose.
Where the answers come from
Google's documentation on featured snippets says they can appear within the related questions group, which is the formal name for this box. Each answer is a passage lifted from a page that Google's systems judged to answer that specific question well, with the page's title and link beneath it. The page does not need to rank first for the main query; it needs to answer the sub-question better than anything else.
How to become an answer
Ask the question as a heading, in the words people use. Answer it directly in the sentence or two immediately beneath, before any context or caveats. Keep the answer self-contained so that it makes sense lifted out. Where the answer is a list or a table, format it as one. Then let the rest of the page go deeper for the reader who stays.
One question per page works best when the question stands on its own; a question as a section on a broader page works when it belongs there. Either way, the answer has to be extractable.
The free content plan
The questions Google shows for your main keywords are the questions Google has evidence people ask. Open the box, expand a few, and write them down. Each is a page or a heading you should have, and together they describe the topic cluster Google expects a site that owns this subject to cover.
What it is worth
Fewer clicks than a normal first result, because many people read the answer and leave. More visibility than most positions, because the box often sits near the top. And it is one of the sources from which AI answers are assembled, so a page that reliably wins these questions is also a page that assistants can quote.
Where this shows up in the tracker
Every term in this glossary is something the product actually measures or acts on. Plans start at £29 a month, with rank tracking, AI visibility, the daily AI readiness scan, security and domain health, Search Console, backlinks and audits on every one of them.
Related terms
Featured snippet
A featured snippet is a result where Google shows a passage from a page first, above the page's title and link, usually at the top of the results, to answer the query directly. Google's systems choose the page automatically; there is no markup that requests it. Since 2020 a page shown as the snippet is not repeated lower down, and Search Console counts it as position one.
Topic cluster
A topic cluster is a set of pages that each answer one specific question about a subject, all linking to and from a central page that covers the subject as a whole. The central page is called a pillar or cornerstone page. The structure works because it concentrates internal links and relevance around one topic, which is how a site comes to rank for the whole of it rather than for scattered phrases.
Long-tail keyword
A long-tail keyword is a specific search phrase with a small number of searches a month, as opposed to a broad head term with many. Fireworks is a head term; quiet fireworks for a wedding in October is long tail. Long-tail phrases are less contested, so a small site can rank for them, and they are usually typed by someone closer to buying.
AI Overview
An AI Overview is the AI-generated answer Google places above the ordinary search results for many queries. It answers the question on the results page, citing a handful of sources, which means a share of searchers never click through to any website at all.