Demand Signal

What the Demand signal panel is

The Demand signal panel is a collapsible section that appears inside the Writing Guidance output. It shows People Also Ask questions fetched from Google's search results page for the analysis keyword, organized by the 8 diagnostic dimensions ContentGrapher uses to evaluate structural completeness.

The panel's header shows the label "Demand signal" and a count of the total PAA questions found. Clicking the header expands the body, which lists the questions as pill badges grouped under dimension headings such as "What is it?" or "What constraints matter?"

The panel appears only when SERP data resolved for the analysis. SERP is fetched server-side for every analysis, authenticated or not. If the SERP request failed or the keyword returned no PAA results, the panel is not shown. No error state is displayed in its place: the panel simply does not appear.

The 8 diagnostic dimensions

ContentGrapher evaluates structural completeness by asking 8 questions about the primary topic: What is it?, How does it work?, What does it depend on?, What does it affect?, Who interacts with it?, What constraints matter?, What alternatives matter?, and What example grounds it?

When SERP data includes PAA questions, ContentGrapher maps each question to the dimension it most closely addresses. The panel groups questions under these headings so you can see which structural areas have active user demand behind them.

When the mapping is not available but PAA questions were returned, the panel shows a flat list of questions without dimension groupings.

How the panel affects the writing brief

The PAA questions in the Demand signal panel are passed to the Phase 2b model as a demand signal block. The model instruction is to prioritize gaps in diagnostic dimensions that have PAA questions behind them. The ordering of items in your writing brief is influenced by which dimensions showed active user demand.

This is not a deterministic ranking: there is no code-level algorithm that moves items up or down based on PAA counts. The model weighs the demand signal alongside the full explanation framework and audience specification when deciding which gaps to address first and how prominently to frame each one in the writing brief summary.

When dimension mapping is not available, a fallback instruction tells the model to use the flat question list to infer which gaps matter most to real users. The effect on ordering is the same in kind, but less precise in targeting specific dimensions.

The practical implication: if the panel shows several questions under "What constraints matter?" and your brief prominently flags constraints as the first thing to address, those two things are connected. The demand signal is one of the inputs that produced that priority ordering.

When the panel does not appear

The panel requires SERP data to be present. SERP data does not always resolve. Three common reasons it is absent: the SERP fetch failed for this keyword at analysis time; the keyword returned no People Also Ask results in SERP; or SERP data was otherwise unavailable at the time of analysis.

When the panel is absent, the writing brief was generated without a demand signal. The brief is still a complete structural analysis: it uses the explanation framework and audience specification only, without PAA-driven dimension weighting. Re-analyzing the same keyword at a different time may return SERP data and produce a panel.

Authenticated and anonymous access

The panel is visible to all users: authenticated, unauthenticated, and share link recipients. SERP is fetched server-side during analysis and stored with the result. When you share an analysis via a share link, the recipient sees the same Demand signal panel, or its absence, that you see.