Naver is moving its “Related Questions” (관련질문) feature out of AI Briefing and making it a standalone block in the main search results, starting Thursday 22 October. Clicking a suggested question now opens the answer inline, so there is no new results page and no new query. The block will also appear on searches where AI Briefing doesn’t trigger at all.
The change was announced on the official Naver Search blog on 19 October. i-boss covered it the same evening, and TechM, Electronic Times and Maeil Business picked it up this morning. Maeil’s headline compares it to Perplexity’s follow-up questions, which is fair.
What changes on 22 October
According to Naver’s post:
- It applies to queries where people tend to keep asking follow-up questions, not every query. Naver hasn’t published a list.
- Related Questions used to sit at the bottom of the AI Briefing panel. Now they get their own “independent area” in the results.
- The suggestions are meant to go beyond “similar keywords” and reflect the context of what you’re searching for.
- Selecting a question expands the answer in place. Naver’s wording is that you no longer “need to move to a new search result”.
TechM adds two details from Naver. First, the block’s position will vary: it can appear in the middle or at the bottom of the results “according to search intent and exploration context”, rather than always at the top with AI Briefing. Second, it removes a dependency. AI Briefing only generates when there is enough fresh data to summarise, so Related Questions used to vanish whenever the Briefing did. A Naver spokesperson told TechM that improvements in AI now let it suggest the next question more precisely without a full Briefing.
This is Naver’s People Also Ask, and it’s built to keep you on Naver
Anyone who has worked with Google will recognise this as People Also Ask, with an AI layer for the follow-ups. TechM states the goal openly: reduce repeat typing, encourage continuous exploration and increase time spent within Naver search. That fits everything Naver has done to its SERP this autumn. Last week it gave web, blog, Cafe, Knowledge iN and video results one unified layout. Before that it shut outside AI out of Blog, Cafe and Knowledge iN.
The question nobody has answered is where the inline answers come from. Naver’s post doesn’t say, and nor does the coverage. Korean SEO blog TheCheck lists the source-selection criteria and click impact as unknowns. Our working assumption is that they draw heavily on Naver’s own UGC. A study we covered last week found AI Briefing cites Naver Blog 46.5% of the time, and there’s no obvious reason a cheaper, lighter answer block would reach further out to the open web.
What to do before Thursday
Do three things this week.
- Baseline now. Export clicks, impressions and CTR from Naver Search Advisor by landing page for the last four weeks. “Answer in place” blocks rarely raise click-through, and you’ll want a clean before and after. Annotate 22 October in your reporting.
- Map the follow-ups. For your top informational queries, write down the second and third questions a searcher would ask (cost, eligibility, timings, comparisons). Then check whether one page answers each of them in a clear first sentence. That’s the content most likely to be lifted, whether by Naver or by everyone else’s AI.
- Watch your Blog and Cafe presence. If the answers do lean on Naver’s own properties, brand Blog posts that answer specific follow-up questions may be the only way to show up inside the block at all.
It is a small UI change on paper, but the direction matters: more of each query’s journey now happens inside a single Naver results page. We’ll check what the block actually cites once it goes live on Thursday. More in our Naver SEO coverage.