AlsoAsked.com – Mine live People Also Asked data is live (after 2.5 years)
Hey r/bigseo 2 years ago I posted about my tool AlsoAsked going live https://www.reddit.com/r/bigseo/comments/dtp2iz/alsoaskedcom_free_tool_to_explore_people_also/ and you all gave some really nice feedback. Since then, we've been through 3 full infrastructure/backend rebuilds, a 2-year beta phase where we've served over 2,000,000 users and 9,000,000 root searches to get to where we are today.
Scaling the mining of live People Also Ask (PAA) data was much harder than I thought (most Search Engine Result Page (SERP) scraping services can't do it at scale), I tried a few different proxy services (ended up costing high 4-figures a month) until we finally managed to build a system that scaled, returns results fast and is reliable.
As far as I know, AlsoAsked is the only tool that quickly returns live PAA data. Other major tools and smaller ones like SearchResponse https://www.YouTube.com/watchv=W5XZQdx5aIw will return pre-scraped data and match your query on a keyword basis.
The primary advantage of having live data is that you're getting Google's connections between the query and related questions, so you're essentially getting Google's expectation about the proximity of other questions you should be answering – which is why I think it's way more powerful than just string matching scraped PAAs.
Inb4 "AnswerThePublic" – they primarily use Google Suggest/Autocomplete data (which there is an Application Programming Interface (API) for) – a brilliant tool that saves loads of time with their mad libbed searches, but different data for a different purpose.
Anyway, the tool now offers a massive 3 searches per month free – which sounds like nothing, but with our current visitors, this means we serve a maximum of almost 1,000,000 free searches per month (which costs money). Apart from that, if you think it's a time saving, I put accounts from $15, cancel anytime.
This version has been live a couple of weeks and seems really solid, so API is the next thing on the list and I think that will be everything from your original wishlist.
If you want it to check it out it's here https://alsoasked.com/, welcome any feedback as usual. 15 💬🗨
dubbull Congratulations. I was an early adopter of the tool and really dig it.
Do you have an ETA for the Application Programming Interface (API)?
Do you think you'd be able to add returning the current answer with each the question (via the API)?
tafferboy ✍️ One thing I was considering doing was offering a "suggested" answer to PAAs generated by OpenAI/GPT3 https://twitter.com/thetafferboy/status/1501872119524777987, but I thought this might be a bit Pandora's box.
What would you use the current answers for? That's certainly possible.
Will announce API soon, don't want to leapfrog dev :)
dubbull That's exactly one of my use cases.
I don't want to run with the Artificial Intelligence (AI) answer without human intervention so I want to show the current answer and the AI answer side-by-side so the human can "swipe left/right" on the AI content if it's good enough for the site.
I can get the first four questions and answers today via other SERP APIs but to get more from the tree would be helpful.
mbuckbee Congratulations! You had mentioned Answer the Public and their use of different API/datasets.
I'd love it if you could expand a bit on what the "different purpose" is for your service vs theirs.
tafferboy ✍️ Edit: I get this question a lot, so I made a quick video of the answer too https://www.YouTube.com/watchv=9z4IbchVW7Y.
Hey u/mbuckbee great question!
I want to start off by saying I really like AnswerThePublic, it's one of my favourite keyword research tools, but as I said there are some big use differences…
As AnswerThePublic says on the search box, it works best if you enter 1-2 search terms, this is because they are mad-libbing your search query by adding things like "can" "how" "when" "where" etc to it. You can probably already see why this prepending/appending method runs into trouble with already fleshed out queries.
However, with a single word like say if we try Bitcoin, we'll get a map like this https://i.imgur.com/qkEcAh6.png. Because we are trying all these different words like "can" "how" "when" etc, we are of course getting lots of different search terms with a very broad topic. There is no real information about which of these terms might be connected, or if someone asks one of this questions, what else they may want to know – some are on completely different topics!
In short, ATP is an amazing way to get a bird's eye view of a whole topic and things you could write about.
If you pick someone from that map and decide you want to write an article on which bitcoin wallet is the best for the UK, that is where things start to fall apart. If you use a precise query like that, you'll get a map like this https://i.imgur.com/ow7aHGc.png – which is essentially just the same question repeated over and over, it doesn't really tell you anything.
In my tool stack, once I've decided what I want to write about, this is where I use AlsoAsked. If you use the query which bitcoin wallet is the best for the UK in AlsoAsked, you'll get an output map like this – super helpful! https://i.imgur.com/mvwKxyN.png You can immediately see that if you're writing about which is the best wallet, that searches are looking to know about • Reliability • If there are restrictions which ones are available i wallet, that searchers are looking to know aboutegal in the UK • Which have fees • General guides for choosing wallets • Specific brands, Coinbase, and banks
It gives you an easy blueprint to explore what you should write about in that article. The reason in my opinion this is so powerful is because this is what Google knows people are also asking in close proximity – so it serves to logic, if you answer a bunch of these questions, you are probably a good page!
mbuckbee This was extraordinarily helpful. Thanks for taking the time to write up such a thorough response.
ecommerceoptimizer I don't know the op and am not associated with his tool
I use his tool alsoasked.com as one of my primary tools for content map creating, content brief creation etc. I learned about searchrespon.io from the period this tool was offline, because he recommended it on the home page. The two of them are our go-to tools. I teach e-commerce sellers about building evergreen content-driven communities to drive organic ranking and these two tools, are the main tools that I use as recommended research tools. I used to use Answer the public, but once I found alsoasked, I haven't been back. I sell a standalone content Management workshop that I created that will teach the student how to create a content-driven system including automation, outsourcing etc… And it includes also asked as the primary tool for creating the content map and subsequent content briefs.
We recommend launching with a minimum of 50 articles. Coming up with an adequate content map with 50 relevant topics and then creating the subheadings for the project briefs used to be a b1tch. This tool makes it a walk in the park. Ecommerce sellers struggle with content. There is nothing worse than thinking, oh shit what will I write for tomorrow and writing something that you know people are looking for and will get eyes on it. One of the selling points of my system is that you will never struggle with content topics again. I've been creating content for my own sites for over 20 years, helping e-commerce sellers do it for almost that long. There is very little comparison between this tool and answer the public because this tool helps you understand the hierarchy of your content. Answer the public just throws it up there in alphabetical order or order by question. That does me no favors
When we create content, every time we do we source the topic, title, and subheadings using also asked. Then we use searchresponse to ensure that the title and subheadings each have volume baked in. Our subheadings are formatted as the title of that section so if Google ranks the passage, they also have the title to use. It has drastically upped the game for my many clients and students. This may sound cheesy as F, but it changed my life because of the amount of time it freed up for me. A total game-changer, if you ask me. I haven't told anyone about either of these besides my clients and students because it gave us an advantage. Now that the cat is out of the bag, I have no issues endorsing it at all. Thanks for the effort.
Edit: I noticed some comments about using Artificial Intelligence (AI) with it. People are so freaking lazy, not you, potential users. If you give them the choice to use AI, they will. AI adds zero human inflection in content. Some of the AI tools are ok, but you must edit them and add some emotion. Google and Bing both have said they consider AI content spammy and don't rank it well. Then again, maybe showing them the AI answer option is a good thing because it will lower the competition , lol
