A couple weeks ago I reported that Google said they are expanding, as a pilot, the Google Question Hub from India and similar regions (where it launched in 2018), to the US for COVID-19 related searches. But truth is, as I even said in my first report, this is beyond COVID-19 searches – it works for other searches as well.

Google told me it was a pilot in the US that is being shown to some searches for COVID-19 related queries that do not have great answers in search. But for virtually everyone who sent me examples, including the ones I had in my first report, they are able to trigger this for non-COVID searches. Some said it was for gardening queries, some said for the payroll protection plan, and most said it was unrelated to COVID-19 queries.

This the box, again, so you know what I am talking about:

So I am not sure how limited this pilot is because many searchers are seeing this on mobile and many are seeing it for queries completely unrelated to COVID-19.

In terms of the content producers who are able to answer these queries? Google wouldn’t tell me, I am sorry.

Forum discussion at Twitter.