How do you scrape People also Ask questions on Google?

How do you scrape People also Ask questions on Google? There are a few ways you can scrape People also ask questions on Google. This guide will show you how.

Wouter van der Meij
Wouter van der Meij
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How to use Screaming frog to scrape People also Ask questions?

1. Set Screaming frog to List mode, Speed to 1 URL per 20 seconds, User agent to a normal browser.

2. Create a list of Google search URLs to scrape (you could use the keyword merge tool to create URLs)

3. Set a custom extraction to get the PAA's. Inspect > Right-click on the PAA >

4. Paste this Xpath into the Screaming Frog custom extraction field and tweak it so it scrapes all questions

5. Save and run Screaming frog on the list of Google search result URLs.

How to use a simple Chrome extension to scrape the People Also Ask box?

1. Install the Chrome extension called

2. Right-click on one of the questions and choose

Using a ranking tracker to scrape People also Ask questions

Personally, I really like the Screaming Frog method. But, you sometimes also want to keep track of these questions over time, and maybe even keep track of who ranks in them.

Therefore, I created a dashboard in Umbrellum that gives you all kinds of insights into the People Also Asked questions that are shown.

Every day, the PAA's are saved to a database. It shows what questions are asked most often for your keyword set, the search volumes of the keyword, and it shows you who ranks in them.

If a paid Umbrellum account is not the right fit for you, you can query the Umbrellum database via a free tool to find questions related to specific keywords.

There are a few ways you can scrape People also ask questions on Google:

  1. Using Screaming Frog (Medium difficulty but slightly scalable)
  2. Using a simple Chrome extension: scraper (easy, not scalable)
  3. Using a ranking tracker: Umbrellum, or others (easy, highly scalable)

How to use Screaming frog to scrape People also Ask questions?

In short, what you'll be doing is the following:

  1. First, set Screaming frog to List mode.
  2. Set the speed to 1 URL per 20 seconds (as slow as possible)
  3. Set the user agent to a normal browser (Mozilla or similar, not Screaming frog native or GoogleBot)
  4. Create a list of Google search URLs to scrape (you could use the keyword merge tool to create URLs)
  5. Set a custom extraction to get the PAA's. On a SERP, right-click on a question and click "inspect".
  6. In the source, right-click on the question again, and choose "copy full Xpath". Or, use this: //g-accordion-expander/div[1]/div
  7. Paste this Xpath into the Screaming Frog custom extraction field and tweak it so it scrapes all questions, regardless of where on the page they are.
  8. Save and run Screaming frog on the list of Google search result URLs.

How to use a simple Chrome extension to scrape the People Also Ask box?

  1. Install the Chrome extension called "Scraper" https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/scraper/mbigbapnjcgaffohmbkdlecaccepngjd
  2. Go to a Google search result page and perform a search where you want to scrape the questions from.
  3. Right-click on one of the questions and choose "Scrape Similar".
  4. Now paste the following Xpath to scrape the questions on the page: //g-accordion-expander/div[1]/div
  5. Repeat for a new search to get more questions.

This method isn't very scalable, you have to do all the searches yourself by hand. But if you quickly need some questions for an article this is an easy way to do it.

Using a ranking tracker to scrape People also Ask questions

Personally, I really like the Screaming Frog method, as it is quite scalable and easy to set up. But, you sometimes also want to keep track of these questions over time, and maybe even keep track of who ranks in them. Therefore, I created a dashboard in Umbrellum that gives you all kinds of insights into the People Also Asked questions that are shown.

Every day, for each keyword that shows PAA's, the PAA question is saved to the database. It will give you an idea of what questions are asked most often for your keyword set, the search volumes of the keywords that show the questions, and it shows you who ranks in them.

I've built this because it's more scalable than the Screaming Frog method and it gives me more insight to report back on to my clients.

You can try Umbrellum for free for 14 days, you can enter up to 25 keywords in a free account to track daily, or 125 keywords to track weekly. It will then show you all the PAA's it found in the PAA dashboard, in practice for countries like the UK and the US it will show a few hundred PAA's. In other countries, it'll be less, as PAA's aren't shown as much in non-English countries.

If a paid Umbrellum account is not the right fit for you, you can always query the Umbrellum database via our free tool to find questions related to specific keywords.