Unfortunately, there’s very little data available on how often people interact with and click sources in PAA boxes. That’s likely because Google doesn’t show us this data in Google Search Console, and there’s no other reliable source.
In fact, the only third-party study I’m aware of is this one from Backlinko. It states that, on average, only 3% of searchers interact with the PAA box.
8 3 percent paa interactions backlinko
But it also notes that this number varies wildly, with some queries seeing as high as a 13.6% interaction rate.
9 paa interactions study backlinko
And remember, interactions aren’t the same as clicks. Expanding an answer would count as an interaction, so the number of people who end up clicking on the answer source is likely much lower.
Even worse, most PAA boxes show 3-4 answers by default, creating more choices for searchers and more competition for web pages.
The workload like this whatsapp number list allows both the vendor and the affiliate to focus on. Clicks are the number of clicks coming to your website’s URL from organic search results.
Still, let’s be reasonably optimistic and make the following assumptions:
3% average interaction rate.
40% of interactions result in a click on the source.
Interactions are split equally across four questions (i.e., 25% go to each).
Using this math, around 0.3% of searches with PAA boxes result in clicks. In other words, to get 100 extra clicks from the PAA box, you’d need to appear as the source for a question that shows up for keywords with a combined monthly search volume of around 33,000.
That might sound quite discouraging, but there are a couple of things to remember here:
Google often shows the same question in the PAA box across hundreds of queries. And because it always pulls the answer from the same source, showing up for keywords with a high combined search volume is often easier than it sounds.
Google might use your page as the source for multiple answers. For example, perhaps your page answers tons of common questions. If Google shows these questions across many search queries, impressions, and clicks can soon mount up.
It’s also worth keeping in mind that traffic isn’t everything. Getting 50 or 100 extra clicks to a page with a high conversion rate or value per visitor could significantly boost your bottom line.
My opinion, then, is that ‘optimizing’ for PAA boxes can sometimes be worthwhile for high traffic or high-value pages.
So let’s explore that more…