Google has now expanded the use of Answer Boxes beyond just simple bolded paragraphs into an accordion style interactive. Dan Barker (yes, legendary burn artist Dan Barker) posted an image on Twitter of the new format. It was showing on the query for “skippy brush kangaroo documentary” and features elements of the page broken out into separate, clickable accordion style content that shows more after clicking. Dr. Pete was also able to get this new “People Also Ask” answer box with queries like “vps” while running Mozcast.

The use of answer boxes is on the rise recently — spotting one last week with a test for commercial queries and now with the new people also ask format. It’ll be interesting to look over time and see if the use of these on-results pages Google features continues.

 

For those who can't see the Google "People who ask this also ask…" Qs – here's what happens when you click them. pic.twitter.com/l01mN29KUQ

— dan barker (@danbarker) April 17, 2015

Google testing new "People Also Ask" result (this from a search for "vpn") — pic.twitter.com/PaxQuyebjW

— Dr. Pete Meyers (@dr_pete) April 17, 2015

 

Google appears to be increasing the use of answer boxes — typically used for informational queries and how-to searches.

Today, the team at Cognitive SEO spotted this box on mobile for a search ‘smallest car camera‘. Currently, Amazon is snagging the top ranking with a product page. These large answer boxes have been reducing traffic to top-ranking pages for awhile now, but typically only publishers and informational websites like Wikipedia have been impacted.

With this new trend, we could start to see more answer boxes on transactional queries, leading to a larger imbalance in clicks between the one and two top slots in search results.

Answer Boxes Gone Commercial. Prime time position for "smallest car camera" for Amazon. pic.twitter.com/ALmL8BfTXk

— cognitiveSEO (@cognitiveSEO) April 12, 2015