SUMMARY
Google launched Question Hub beta in December 2018 to crowdsource content for unanswered questions
Question Hub has been launched in India in Hindi and English and is available for publishers and content websites
Publishers can view unanswered search questions and accordingly tailor their content and editorial coverage
As Indians are increasingly coming online for the first time, the range of search questions that Google processes on a daily basis is also expanding. With 627 Mn internet users, Google is naturally finding it hard to keep up with new questions from the Indian audience.
Ben Gomes, head of Google’s search and Assistant products, said that more people are searching for answers to things than the actual online content available around some terms. As a result, search terms are returning poor quality results or none at all.
Google says the rate of Indian users coming online for the first time is increasing at a faster pace than the rest of the world. This has created a lag in the information available online. Search traffic from small towns has surpassed the traffic generated Tier 1 cities and metros.
To solve this content deficit Google launched Question Hub in beta in October, a platform where publishers can see the questions that users are asking Google but for which there’s no relevant content online.
Question Hub is being launched in India, Indonesia and Nigeria in Hindi, English and Bahasa Indonesia. While many users in India are using regional languages for search queries, the results in English may not always translate well or accurately in regional languages. Question Hub lets publishers also view which articles need to be localised for more relevant search results.
As Question Hub collects unanswered questions directly from the users, it helps identify content gaps and publishers can accordingly direct their editorial and content teams to fill those gaps with relevant answers in articles or pages.
Google says, “Publishers can leverage these questions to create more impactful content for their audience. Once they create an article or video, publishers are then able to submit it in Question Hub, where they review content performance metrics.”
