People Also Ask answers on Google are now almost all AI Overviews. AlsoAsked found that 97% of English-language PAA answers in the first week of September 2026 were AI Overviews, and Allintitle reports 100% since August. For B2B teams, a question-led page no longer wins a quoted snippet. It competes to be one of several cited sources inside a generated answer that earns fewer clicks.
Below: what changed, why it matters for research-stage B2B queries, and six changes to FAQ content. For how Google picks sources, read how AI Overviews work.
What changed in late August and September 2026
Four changes landed within two weeks, and none came with a Google blog post.
- August 28: some AI Overviews expand on their own. A Google spokesperson confirmed to Search Engine Land that, for some topics, AI Overviews may open to their full length automatically. The Show more step disappears and classic results move further down the page, so the result looks closer to AI Mode. Google cancels the expansion if the user has already started scrolling. Google said its research shows users "engage deeper in follow-up exploration," but did not say how many queries are affected.
- August 31: AI impressions reporting for every site. Google says the generative AI performance report in Search Console has rolled out to all websites worldwide, though not every property has access yet. It counts impressions in AI Overviews and AI Mode, not clicks.
- September 8: a thinner citations panel. Search Engine Roundtable reported that Google is testing a narrower design for the panel of source links shown beside the AI Overview. Barry Schwartz noted it is less noticeable and could mean fewer clicks. It is a test, not a launch.
- September 9: People Also Ask answers are almost all AI Overviews. Search Engine Roundtable reported two datasets. AlsoAsked, a PAA research tool, took a sample of 19.2 million English-language results from 2026 and found 97% of PAA answers in the first week of September were AI Overviews, up from 86% in August. Allintitle's Also Ask Miner data showed 100% from August 2026. About 14 months earlier, AlsoAsked had put the figure at around 12%.
Read those percentages as directional. They are samples from tools built to monitor PAA, not Google figures, with no country breakdown and no comment from Google. They agree on direction: in English-language results, a People Also Ask question now opens to a generated answer, not an excerpt from one page. If you sell into India, Singapore, the GCC or Canada, check your priority questions in those markets.
Why it matters for B2B research-stage queries
B2B buyers research in questions: what a category includes, how approaches compare, what an implementation involves. Many B2B teams wrote FAQ pages to win the People Also Ask boxes around those questions. Three things are different now.
Fewer classic snippets
A classic PAA answer quoted a passage from one page and linked to it. If the AlsoAsked and Allintitle samples hold, that single-source excerpt is close to gone from English-language PAA. An FAQ page that used to own a question no longer has a quoted slot to own.
More cited passages, shared with competitors
Google's AI features documentation says its models identify supporting pages while a response is generated, and that these features can show a wider and more diverse set of links than classic results. Your page becomes one source among several, and the generated text, not your wording, frames the answer. On a category question, the cited sources shape which vendors a buying committee hears about first. Google also says AI Mode and AI Overviews may use different models, so their links vary. Check both.
Fewer clicks, even when cited
The clearest independent evidence on clicks is still a Pew Research Center study published in July 2025, based on the Google searches of 900 US adults in March 2025. Users who saw an AI summary clicked a traditional result in 8% of visits, against 15% when no summary appeared. They clicked a link inside the summary in 1% of visits. The study predates the automatic expansion and the thinner panel test, and no data on their effect has been published yet. Our analysis of AI Overviews traffic impact covers the wider evidence.
So a B2B page can gain AI impressions, lose clicks and still do its job, if the buyer remembers the brand and looks it up later.
Old PAA snippet vs AI Overview answer
This comparison sticks to what Google's documentation and the reports above confirm.
| Dimension | Old People Also Ask snippet | AI Overview answer |
|---|---|---|
| What gets shown | An excerpt quoted from one web page | A generated response, which Google now expands to full length for some queries |
| What gets credited | One page, linked with the excerpt | Several supporting pages, in a links panel Google is testing in a thinner design |
| AI Overview share of English PAA answers | About 12%, 14 months before September 2026 (AlsoAsked) | 97% in early September 2026 (AlsoAsked); 100% from August (Allintitle) |
| What you control | The page's text, plus snippet eligibility through nosnippet and max-snippet | The same snippet controls; Google says no special markup or files are needed to be included |
FAQ rich results are gone, but FAQ content still feeds answers
Google limited FAQ rich results to well-known, authoritative government and health sites in 2023. Its documentation changelog then records that the feature stopped appearing in Google Search on May 7, 2026, and that Google removed the FAQ rich result documentation in June 2026. The old FAQPage guide now redirects to that changelog entry. No B2B site should expect expandable FAQ results under its listing.
FAQ content still matters. AI Overviews are grounded in indexed pages, and a visible question and answer is ordinary content Google can use. Only markup written for a rich result lost its value. Google's guide to optimizing for generative AI features says structured data is not required, and its structured data guidelines still say not to mark up content that readers cannot see. Our post on FAQ schema in AI search covers the markup decision in depth.
What B2B teams should change in FAQ and answer content
- Find which buyer questions trigger People Also Ask and AI Overviews.
- Rewrite FAQ answers as self-contained 40 to 80 word passages with specific facts.
- Place the answer on the page that deserves the click, not only in an FAQ block.
- Match any FAQ schema to the visible text, word for word.
- Prove who you are with entity facts and first-party evidence.
- Measure AI impressions alongside branded search and demo requests.
Step 1: Find which buyer questions trigger PAA and AI Overviews
Start from real buyer language: questions from sales calls, RFPs, security questionnaires and support tickets, grouped by buying role. Search each one signed out in each market you sell into, and record whether a PAA box appears, whether it opens to an AI Overview that expands on its own, and which domains are cited. In Search Console, filter the Performance report for question words, and check which pages already earn AI impressions in the generative AI performance report. Our guides to the generative AI performance report and query fan-out explain how to read those results.
Step 2: Rewrite answers as self-contained 40 to 80 word passages
Google says no special writing style or chunking is required, so this is our editorial standard, not a Google rule: a self-contained answer is easier to quote correctly anywhere. Each answer should state the answer in the first sentence, name the product or company instead of "it" or "we," and include at least one specific fact a buyer could check.
Illustrative example. The product below is invented.
- Before: "Does it integrate with our systems? Yes. Our platform offers flexible integrations with many leading tools."
- After: "Which systems does Northwind CLM integrate with? Northwind CLM connects natively to Salesforce, SAP S/4HANA and Microsoft Dynamics 365, and syncs contract data in both directions. Other systems connect through a documented REST API. Customer admins configure native connectors in the admin console without custom code."
The second version stays accurate when quoted alone. The first gives a system nothing to cite. More in our guide to writing citable content.
Step 3: Put the answer on the page that deserves the click
A generic FAQ page can earn a citation, but the rare click it sends lands where a buyer cannot act. Put the full answer near the top of the page where the decision happens: the integration, industry, comparison or service page. Keep a shorter version in the FAQ block that links there. For a SaaS company, that means answering integration, security and implementation questions on product pages, the pattern in our SaaS AEO and pipeline work. Since clicks are scarcer, the destination page has to convert the visitors it gets, which is where conversion rate optimization matters.
Step 4: Keep FAQ schema matching visible text
If you keep FAQPage markup, make every question and answer in it identical to what the page shows. Remove entries for questions that were cut from the page, and do not mark up answers hidden from readers. Markup that disagrees with the page breaks Google's structured data guidelines and earns no rich result in return. When an answer changes, update the markup in the same release.
Step 5: Strengthen entity and first-party proof
When several sources can answer a question, specifics make a page worth citing. Google's generative AI guide stresses non-commodity content that reflects real expertise: for a B2B firm, named authors, figures you will publish, named customers and consistent company facts across your site, LinkedIn and directories. Off-site presence counts too. In Ahrefs' September 2026 list of the domains most cited in US AI Overviews, based on its Brand Radar data across all topics, YouTube held 22.9% of citations and Reddit 18.5%, with LinkedIn 19th at 0.6%. That is a consumer-heavy sample, so read it as a signal that video, community threads and executive posts get cited, not as a B2B benchmark. Our guide to entity SEO covers the site side.
First-party proof works best when it answers each buying role's question. For Aavenir, which sells AI contract lifecycle management on ServiceNow, we built content around the separate questions procurement, legal, finance and IT ask. The program took qualified meetings from single digits to tens a month, with 90 to 95% of results coming from inbound search and website content.
Step 6: Measure with AI impressions, branded search and demo requests
Clicks alone understate this visibility. Use three signals together:
- AI impressions. The generative AI performance report shows impressions by page, country, date and device. In the main Performance report, all links in an AI Overview share one position, and a click on an external link counts as a click.
- Branded search. Track branded query impressions in Search Console for the markets you target. A buyer who sees your name in an answer may search for it later, a pattern our post on AI search and branded demand explores.
- Demo requests. Add a free-text "How did you first hear about us?" field to demo forms and code the answers monthly. Our guide to AI search attribution connects those answers to pipeline.
None proves an AI Overview caused a deal, but against a baseline taken before you rewrite, they show whether demand is moving.
Where to start this week
Pick the 20 buyer questions closest to revenue, check them live in each market, and rewrite the answers on the pages that should earn the click. Fix schema after the content is right. To see how this fits a full program, read how AEO, GEO and SEO work together or our AEO, GEO and SEO service. Teams in the US can also look at our New York AEO and GEO practice. For a review of which of your pages AI Overviews already cite, request a free audit.
