Answer
Jun 04, 2024 - 07:08 AM
As you create helpful Q&A content on your site and appropriate publish and distribute it, it's eligible to rank in a number of different types of SERP results. In general, Answerbase customers have thrived through the Google Helpful Content Update, the Helpful Content System, and the Core Ranking Signal Updates (see charts on how Q&A content has exploded in Google's latest core updates at the bottom of this post).
But first...we'll show you some examples of what types of results Q&A performs in.
AI Mode & AI Overviews
Of course...everybody is focused on how AI is going to change search and finding information forever. The good news is, AI (whether through Google or other) needs good content to feed on...and Answerbase enables businesses to identify customer demanded content, fulfill it, and effectively distributes and publishes that content for search engines. See how Google surfaces Answerbase-powered Q&A content within their AI overviews both within the overview text itself (referenced through a link right within the overview) and then also within it's more traditional references.
See how Q&A is referenced within Google's AI Mode here:
and in AI Overviews here:
You can see another example here where the link to the Q&A content reference is right within the AI Overview....see here:
We've also seen cases where the Q&A content references are ALL OVER the AI Overviews as the source of the content and then also referenced as a traditional "featured snippet" below that:
and see this Q&A as the reference to a discontinued product where our customer is leading them to the product replacement through the Q&A content here:
We've also seen variants of the response that link directly to the online merchant right within the answer....see example here:
and one more example for good measure where there are multiple references in both AI overview as well as traditional results, see example here:
So...Google's AI results are loving the Q&A content and referencing that quite prominently as it's looking to ensure that searchers can be exposed to great information and be able to easily know and reference who provided that information. But as mentioned, there are other players in the search space now and it's important to service them as well....so see how Q&A powered through Answerbase has powered the visibility within ChatGPT here:
and how the Q&A shows up and is referenced on Perplexity here:
and then of course there is Bing....see how Bing's AI and search results are managing this type of search and referencing ecommerce FAQs within it....
So...as search technology continues to change....any search engine will need to source great content from great sources...and Answerbase helps facilitate that. We encourage you to read our post about why this will sustain into the future....as both Google and any other AI search engine still depend on the sharing of real experience by real people.
Now....let's dig into some other ways and formats that Q&A shows up in search results.
Discussions & Forums
You can see Q&A referenced within discussions and forums as shown here:
here is another example:
So...you can rank for discussions and forums through Q&A content....even if you only have one answer posted. We hear quite a bit about "Reddit Marketing" as brands look to be within these types of results...which is fine, but as a first step...just make sure that you have your own Q&A "Answerbase" because you can get the rankings without bowing to the "Reddit Moderator gods"...see this example:
Google isn't "rewarding Reddit" with anything special here....Reddit is just a very property with a concentrated example type of content that Google is steering towards and has the volume of content that you see "Reddit" displayed prominently...but it's not about Reddit. It's about "people first content". So you can have your own knowledge base that outperforms Reddit, just make sure that you're publishing content that is actually satisfying real people's requests for information...and make sure that your answers are the best out there based on real experience.
People Also Asked Questions
We see this pop up in Google's "People Also Asked" section as well, you can see an example below where an Answerbase customer is referenced twice in the same search in the PAA area:
We've also seen examples where our customers have the number one organic spot and then their Q&A is the first option within the "People Also Asked" section as seen here:
That is a ton of visibility of your pages and content within results.....if you provide the great content that people actually want, Google will reward it. If you're providing more than one piece of specific information that further helps the searcher on the sam topic....Google will display it. This helps searchers find answers to similar or related queries quickly and easily....and it doesn't care whether you've already been referenced....it's goal is to satisfy the search intent of the visitor.
Featured Snippets
Featured snippets are the handy bits of text you see right at the top of Google search results, often called 'Position 0.' They give you a quick, straight-to-the-point answer to your question. You'll usually find these snippets when you ask Google for information on a particular topic.
SERP Thumbnail
Sometimes Google shows those featured snippets with images. A SERP thumbnail is a helpful image that might show up in Google's search engine results page (SERP) alongside other search results. Google includes these thumbnails when it thinks they could be useful for you.
Traditional SERP Results
Of course, Q&A ranks within your tranditional SERP results as well as displayed here:
How Q&A Content Has Been Exploding in Organic Search Results
See the activity below of what happened with a broad range of Answerbase customers that Ahrefs reports back on and how they performed as Google incorporated the Helpful Content System into it's core ranking systems during the Google March 2024 core updates.
See a chart from Google Search Console of an SMB Ecommerce merchant's overall traffic over the last 16 months (taken on June 5th). Keep in mind that this merchant is seasonal with peaks in the summer and dips in the winter, but you'll see the overall traffic when you compare year-over-year (YOY) the impressions and clicks have almost doubled.
Then, even more impressive, see specifically how the Q&A landing pages spawned by Answerbase have performed for that same period for that same SMB ecommerce merchant.
Again, both the impressions and clicks have almost doubled compared to last year and note that the click-through rate to the Q&A landing pages is 3x that of their normal site. Answerbase customers on average have thrives through all of the Google Helpful Content Updates, the introduction of the Helpful Content System and as they continued with their Core Rankings Systems Updates.
UPDATED CHART AUGUST 2024
Take a look at the continued growth in impressions and clicks and Google continues to evolve the SERPs to display and prioritize "People-first content".....you can see the charts for the Q&A landing pages updated here with a 16 month report taken the first week of August.
UPDATED CHART 2025
Answerbase saw another crazy lift to Q&A content during Google's December core update.....see what happened here with the arrows pointing out the original lift in August and then again in December:
Answerbase has AI-enhanced tools to ensure that you're able to efficiently create "people-first helpful content" that both Customers and search engines are looking for, we encourage you to view an overview of what Answerbase's AI is doing on both product-level Q&A and category-level Q&A to get a taste of how Answerbase facilitates the creation of valuable content that leads to both increased conversions as well as organic position and traffic growth as noted above. See a deeper dive on Answerbase's tools for both of these types of optimizations here:
Here are some examples of the types of results that it displays within and helps your SEO visibility of your brand and content.
Helpful Q&A Content Lifting Product Page Positions
Also, Q&A works as supplementary content on your other pages like product pages....so it can lift the positions for those pages as you add relevant and helpful Q&A content with appropriate keywords to provide lift on those pages. See this result below which BEFORE the Q&A helpful content was ranking in product results position at 17.5 and you see the positions AFTER the Q&A helpful content was added to the page where it has two product pages ranking in the top 8 organic "Merchant Listing Experiences" results.
Google is adjusting their core ranking signals to create an incentive for businesses to create "People-First Helpful Content" and Q&A helps satisfy these results, and with "merchant listing experiences" taking over product searches on Google...Product Page SEO is critical for merchants moving forward. We encourage you to book a demo today to talk about what Answerbase can do for your business.
But first...we'll show you some examples of what types of results Q&A performs in.
AI Mode & AI Overviews
Of course...everybody is focused on how AI is going to change search and finding information forever. The good news is, AI (whether through Google or other) needs good content to feed on...and Answerbase enables businesses to identify customer demanded content, fulfill it, and effectively distributes and publishes that content for search engines. See how Google surfaces Answerbase-powered Q&A content within their AI overviews both within the overview text itself (referenced through a link right within the overview) and then also within it's more traditional references.
See how Q&A is referenced within Google's AI Mode here:
and in AI Overviews here:
You can see another example here where the link to the Q&A content reference is right within the AI Overview....see here:
We've also seen cases where the Q&A content references are ALL OVER the AI Overviews as the source of the content and then also referenced as a traditional "featured snippet" below that:
and see this Q&A as the reference to a discontinued product where our customer is leading them to the product replacement through the Q&A content here:
We've also seen variants of the response that link directly to the online merchant right within the answer....see example here:
and one more example for good measure where there are multiple references in both AI overview as well as traditional results, see example here:
So...Google's AI results are loving the Q&A content and referencing that quite prominently as it's looking to ensure that searchers can be exposed to great information and be able to easily know and reference who provided that information. But as mentioned, there are other players in the search space now and it's important to service them as well....so see how Q&A powered through Answerbase has powered the visibility within ChatGPT here:
and how the Q&A shows up and is referenced on Perplexity here:
and then of course there is Bing....see how Bing's AI and search results are managing this type of search and referencing ecommerce FAQs within it....
So...as search technology continues to change....any search engine will need to source great content from great sources...and Answerbase helps facilitate that. We encourage you to read our post about why this will sustain into the future....as both Google and any other AI search engine still depend on the sharing of real experience by real people.
Now....let's dig into some other ways and formats that Q&A shows up in search results.
Discussions & Forums
You can see Q&A referenced within discussions and forums as shown here:
here is another example:
So...you can rank for discussions and forums through Q&A content....even if you only have one answer posted. We hear quite a bit about "Reddit Marketing" as brands look to be within these types of results...which is fine, but as a first step...just make sure that you have your own Q&A "Answerbase" because you can get the rankings without bowing to the "Reddit Moderator gods"...see this example:
Google isn't "rewarding Reddit" with anything special here....Reddit is just a very property with a concentrated example type of content that Google is steering towards and has the volume of content that you see "Reddit" displayed prominently...but it's not about Reddit. It's about "people first content". So you can have your own knowledge base that outperforms Reddit, just make sure that you're publishing content that is actually satisfying real people's requests for information...and make sure that your answers are the best out there based on real experience.
People Also Asked Questions
We see this pop up in Google's "People Also Asked" section as well, you can see an example below where an Answerbase customer is referenced twice in the same search in the PAA area:
We've also seen examples where our customers have the number one organic spot and then their Q&A is the first option within the "People Also Asked" section as seen here:
That is a ton of visibility of your pages and content within results.....if you provide the great content that people actually want, Google will reward it. If you're providing more than one piece of specific information that further helps the searcher on the sam topic....Google will display it. This helps searchers find answers to similar or related queries quickly and easily....and it doesn't care whether you've already been referenced....it's goal is to satisfy the search intent of the visitor.
Featured Snippets
Featured snippets are the handy bits of text you see right at the top of Google search results, often called 'Position 0.' They give you a quick, straight-to-the-point answer to your question. You'll usually find these snippets when you ask Google for information on a particular topic.
SERP Thumbnail
Sometimes Google shows those featured snippets with images. A SERP thumbnail is a helpful image that might show up in Google's search engine results page (SERP) alongside other search results. Google includes these thumbnails when it thinks they could be useful for you.
Traditional SERP Results
Of course, Q&A ranks within your tranditional SERP results as well as displayed here:
How Q&A Content Has Been Exploding in Organic Search Results
See the activity below of what happened with a broad range of Answerbase customers that Ahrefs reports back on and how they performed as Google incorporated the Helpful Content System into it's core ranking systems during the Google March 2024 core updates.
See a chart from Google Search Console of an SMB Ecommerce merchant's overall traffic over the last 16 months (taken on June 5th). Keep in mind that this merchant is seasonal with peaks in the summer and dips in the winter, but you'll see the overall traffic when you compare year-over-year (YOY) the impressions and clicks have almost doubled.
Then, even more impressive, see specifically how the Q&A landing pages spawned by Answerbase have performed for that same period for that same SMB ecommerce merchant.
Again, both the impressions and clicks have almost doubled compared to last year and note that the click-through rate to the Q&A landing pages is 3x that of their normal site. Answerbase customers on average have thrives through all of the Google Helpful Content Updates, the introduction of the Helpful Content System and as they continued with their Core Rankings Systems Updates.
UPDATED CHART AUGUST 2024
Take a look at the continued growth in impressions and clicks and Google continues to evolve the SERPs to display and prioritize "People-first content".....you can see the charts for the Q&A landing pages updated here with a 16 month report taken the first week of August.
UPDATED CHART 2025
Answerbase saw another crazy lift to Q&A content during Google's December core update.....see what happened here with the arrows pointing out the original lift in August and then again in December:
Answerbase has AI-enhanced tools to ensure that you're able to efficiently create "people-first helpful content" that both Customers and search engines are looking for, we encourage you to view an overview of what Answerbase's AI is doing on both product-level Q&A and category-level Q&A to get a taste of how Answerbase facilitates the creation of valuable content that leads to both increased conversions as well as organic position and traffic growth as noted above. See a deeper dive on Answerbase's tools for both of these types of optimizations here:
Here are some examples of the types of results that it displays within and helps your SEO visibility of your brand and content.
Helpful Q&A Content Lifting Product Page Positions
Also, Q&A works as supplementary content on your other pages like product pages....so it can lift the positions for those pages as you add relevant and helpful Q&A content with appropriate keywords to provide lift on those pages. See this result below which BEFORE the Q&A helpful content was ranking in product results position at 17.5 and you see the positions AFTER the Q&A helpful content was added to the page where it has two product pages ranking in the top 8 organic "Merchant Listing Experiences" results.
Google is adjusting their core ranking signals to create an incentive for businesses to create "People-First Helpful Content" and Q&A helps satisfy these results, and with "merchant listing experiences" taking over product searches on Google...Product Page SEO is critical for merchants moving forward. We encourage you to book a demo today to talk about what Answerbase can do for your business.
