Updated on April 15, 2021 by Jordan Kelley
How Helping Google Helps Your Business
TRILLIONS OF QUERIES are entered into Google every year, but an astonishing 15 percent of daily searches are new. This leaves a massive content gap, much larger than publishers typically anticipate. Google’s newest brainchild, Question Hub, was developed solely to help users find answers to questions Google had never been asked before. It’s easy to learn, streamlined, and above all, it’s a win-win for content creators and end users alike
What is Google Question Hub?
Question Hub was rolled out to US users in January 2021. Google asks users to submit the specific questions they cannot find the answer to, then collects theses unanswered questions directly in search. Then Question Hub categorizes and posts the unanswered questions for content creators to answer. Reminiscent of a community Q&A forum, Question Hub aims to bridge the gap between natural language queries and relevant answers.
“We collect unanswered user questions using a variety of different methods,” Google’s team explained. “These unanswered user questions are straight from users, so you may occasionally see misspellings or questions in which the user’s intent is unclear. We’ll continue to explore other ways to find and surface the best unanswered questions from users so we can then share them with creators.”
Weeding through the brush and avoiding the thorns of low-quality content/bad information is a struggle Google, content writers, and users must all face together. Luckily, this is exactly what Question Hub helps Google search users do.
How did Google Question Hub get started?
Originally developed to solidify the foundation of budding search indexes, Google Question Hub Beta first became available in August 2019, exclusively to users in India, Indonesia and Nigeria — where users were struggling to find relevant search returns on the most basic queries.
How does Question Hub Help Me?
Question Hub gives publishers a new platform for helping their content rank in Google, AND help Google to expand on and streamline an already excessive amount of knowledge.
You’re likely already familiar with the questionable reliability of topic and keywording tools, but the biggest advantage Question Hub holds over competitors is their ability to connect end users and publishers directly with each other, for free. In combination with Search Console, the influence of specific answers you’ve submitted is easily tracked via keyword and page ranking statistics. Tools like SEMrush and HubSpot draw from smaller data sets and struggle to identify semantically equal searches, a specific area Google is trying to improve upon here.
Question Hub Results by the Numbers
We compared data on a sample of existing pages, from a two-week period prior to posting on Question Hub, then the two-week period immediately following. We did not account for other traffic source data, however, were able to find some interesting results.
We saw increases in impressions, clicks and average ranking for almost all the page links we submitted. The questions that did not trend as well cannot be attributed to question hub, as these pages were already steadily decreasing in traffic before being added.
Get Started with Google Question Hub in 5 Minutes or Less
- Connect with Question Hub – Navigate to GQH and sign up by giving Google permission to link Question Hub to your existing Google Account.
- Choose Your Fighter – Pick the website or websites you’d like to start using with Question Hub. The website domains you select MUST be verified in Search Console.
- Set Preferences – Select country, language and choose your email notification settings. In 30 seconds or less, you’re up and ready to dive into a sea of unanswered questions.
- Select Topics – Choose from Google’s suggestions or search for specific topics that best describe your brand. Based on the topics you select, Google will recommend specific questions for you to answer.
- Answer – Pick your first question, then get to work. Questions come directly from users, so make sure to include the exact wording of the question in the content used to answer it. Add the link your content, then submit!
Before you know it, you’re giving your content a whole new platform while helping Google to provide users with the highest quality content possible.
Want to know More? Watch: Use Google Question Hub for SEO Traffic Growth
Helpful Hints
Its important users remember Question Hub is still in beta and you may run into occasional issues. As always, Google encourages users provide suggestions and feedback. We ran into a few minor issues, but were able to solve the problem or find an adequate workaround:
- Be Patient. Some parts of Question Hub regularly take over 60 seconds to load, and some days certain tools don’t seem to work for us.
- Search Console can overwhelm Question Hub. We have over 150 verified properties associated with our Search Console account, and initially were not able to login to Question Hub because of this. After temporarily deactivating some of our older properties, and a bit of patience we were able to get in with no problem.
- Performance Tracking is hit or miss – detailed metrics didn’t appear until approximately two weeks after we answered our first questions, in our experience anyway.
Further, the performance tracking inside Question Hub only shows data since the time the answer was posted. To get a true sense of if Question Hub is helping your content, a more in-depth analysis through Search Console is required.
Further, the performance tracking inside Question Hub only shows data since the time the answer was posted. To get a true sense of if Question Hub is helping your content, a more in-depth analysis through Search Console is required.
SearchActions | Quality Means Better Content, for Everyone.
At SearchActions, we take our role as content publishers very seriously. There’s a lot of thought put into the words we write for ourselves and our clients. The internet can be a scary place today, and we’re proud to do our part every day to make sure our contributions are thoughtful, factual, ethical and at the end of the day, hopefully informative to your clients. Users are always asking questions online, let’s use your voice to answer them. Drop us a line today and let us help you be found.