One SEO professional was concerned about Google’s People Also Ask feature. Their main question is: If a link for a query is ranked in the People Also Ask, is it counted as a click or an impression if users click on it?
What if users click on other questions, and then your query gets added to that particular list? How are these things monitored or calculated?
John explained that whenever there’s a URL shown in the search results, Google tries to show that URL in Search Console.
For the People Also Ask sections, John states that if you expand it, it shows a link to your site with that question.
This means that whenever someone expands the People Also Ask section and shows the URL for your site, this is counted as an impression.
And it doesn’t matter if you’re the first one.
This happens at approximately the 00:38 mark in the video.
John Mueller Hangout Transcript
SEO Professional 1 0:38
So my question is related to the People Also Ask sub-feature, which is present in Google. So if a link is, for any of the query, if your particular URL has been ranked at People Also Ask, right? So is it still counted as a click or an impression, you know, if users click on it, and how that feature has been added to the Search Console part?
Is it like the clicks and all those things have been tracked or monitored? And just a follow-up on that: What if the users you know, click on some other questions, and then your query, you know, gets added to that particular list. So how are these things monitored or calculated? Is it still counted as a particular rank on the SERP? Or is it just People Also Ask [inaudible] can be calculated?
John 1:40
Good question. So the short answer is, whenever there’s a URL shown in the search results, we do try to show that in Search Console. So with the People Also Ask sections, I think it is that if you expand it, then it shows a link to your site with that question. And the snippet there.
That means whenever someone expands that People Also Ask section and sees the URL for your site, then that is counted as an impression. And it doesn’t matter if you’re kind of like the first one in the People Also Ask, or if people click like 15 different ones, and then suddenly yours shows up, that would be counted as an impression.
And also, when a click happens that gets counted as a click. I think the ranking of the position is based on the kind of the overall position of that group of elements. So it doesn’t, at least as far as I know, it doesn’t count, like within the People Also Ask section, what position you are.
SEO Professional 1 2:48
So let’s say if any of a particular domain’s URL is in People Also Ask, can it also be in the SERP results?
John 3:01
Sure. Sure. The Search Console, the performance report shows from–the the only thing to watch out for, so the performance report shows the ranking of the top most items. So if you’re listed, like different URLs are listed multiple times in a search results page, it tracks the position of the first one.
