Google explains featured snippets

In their official blog, Google shared some information about featured snippets. If your website is listed with a featured snippet on the search results page, it will stand out from the rest of the results. What are featured snippets, and how can your website be listed with a featured snippet?

What is a featured snippet?

Some Google searches show a descriptive box at the top of the search results. Google calls these boxes ‘featured snippets’ because unlike their regular web listings, the page’s description (the ‘snippet’) comes first.

featured snippet example

Google reverses the usual format with featured snippets. They’re featuring the snippet, hence the ‘featured snippet’ name.

When does Google show featured snippets?

Google displays featured snippets in search when they believe this format will help people more easily discover what they’re seeking, both from the description and when they click on the link to read the page itself.

According to Google, featured snippets especially helpful for those on mobile or searching by voice.

Mobile search traffic has surpassed desktop traffic worldwide. And with the growth in voice-activated digital assistants, more people are doing voice queries. In these cases, the traditional ’10 blue links’ format doesn’t work as well, making featured snippets an especially useful format.

Google continues to show regular listings in response to searches along with featured snippets because featured snippets aren’t meant as a sole source of information.

Featured snippets get clicks

According to Google, featured snippets get clicks. When Google introduced featured snippets in 2014, there were some concerns that they might cause publishers to lose traffic. What if someone learns all they need to know from the snippet and doesn’t visit the source site?

It turned out that featured snippets do drive traffic. For featured snippets, Google cites the source page in the spoken result and they provide a link to the page within the Google Home app, so people can click and learn more:

featured snippet with click

According to Google, they recognize that featured snippets have to work in a way that helps support the sources that ultimately makes them possible.

Is your website listed with a featured snippet?

The Ranking Monitor in SEOprofiler does not only track the position of your web pages in the search results. It also tracks the result type with which your web pages are listed. For example, a monitored keyword will be marked with a star in the list, if your website is listed with a featured snippet:

featured snippet rankings

The Ranking Monitor also tracks other results types, such as local results, Sitelinks, news results, video results, etc. Details on how to improve your chances of being listed with a featured snippet can be found here.

If your website is listed with a featured snippet on Google’s result pages, chances are that your website will get more visitors. The tools in SEOprofiler help you to improve the rankings of your web pages on Google and other search engines. You can create your free SEOprofiler account here:

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Tom Cassy

Tom Cassy is the CEO of SEOprofiler. He blogs about search engine optimization and website marketing topics at “http://blog.seoprofiler.com”.