Google Search "People Also Ask" Showing Less Often

Both Semrush and RankRanger are reporting several point drops in the percentage of time a people also ask box shows up in the Google search results. The drop started on Friday, February 24th, a few days after the rollout of the February 2023 product reviews update.

Here is the Semrush report showing a drop from 65% to 57% of the time in the Google search results:

Here is the RankRanger report showing a drop from 73% to 68% of the time in the Google search results:

Moz is also noticing the drop:

We're seeing some flux since late January, but no recent drops on order of 65%->55%. Worth noting that MozCast skews toward high-volume terms where PAA prevalence is very high (over 90% right now). This varies a lot by data set, from what I've seen.

— Dr. Pete Meyers (@dr_pete) February 28, 2023

I spotted this change via Mordy Obersterin on Twitter who said, "Whoop looks like PAA boxes are down from showing on 65% of SERPs to just over 55% (desktop but same story on mobile). Kinda correlates to the rank volatility over the past few days (but who knows)."

Forum discussion at Twitter.

Update: The day later, it seems back to normal.