What is a Featured Snippet?
To make the search experience as satisfying as possible, Google continually adjusts to the needs of users. In addition to paid and organic results, Featured Snippets have increasingly appeared in recent years. The term “snippet” describes the preview of a website in the search results. Featured Snippets are primarily designed to deliver results faster. They provide an initial concise answer to the search query without users having to visit the website.
This short answer appears in a small box and is displayed as the first organic result. Previously, the website from which the Featured Snippet was created was listed again among the organic search results. Therefore, the position of the Featured Snippet was also called “Position Zero”. Today, this duplication usually no longer exists.
Types of Featured Snippets
There are different types of Featured Snippets. They most commonly appear in the form of a text snippet. As the name suggests, this is a short answer in written form. The combination of text and images also falls under the category of text snippets. Text snippets are created from Wikipedia entries, for example. For some search queries, the first result appears in the form of a video snippet. These are created from YouTube videos, for example. Table snippets can appear both as a table and in the form of a list. These often involve ingredients for recipes or similar listings. As with text snippets, images can also be displayed here.
How do you create a Featured Snippet?
A high position in the search results is of course very desirable. Alongside suitable keywords, a Featured Snippet drawn from the content of your own website is one of the things that contribute to its visibility. Unfortunately, you cannot influence this directly. Google itself decides on the content and source of the Featured Snippet. You can only specify that no Featured Snippet should be created from your own website.
Although Google cannot be influenced directly in its choice of sources, a pattern in the content and structure of suitable websites can be recognised. To increase the chances of a Featured Snippet for your own domain, you should note the following: Text snippets appear mainly when a complete question is typed into the search field. Typically, so-called trigger phrases are part of these questions (e.g.: “What works…”).
To help Google recognise that the respective website contains an answer to the question, both the trigger phrases and so-called follow-up words (e.g.: “Click on…”) should be used. The answer should also not be longer than one or two sentences. Lists and tables also increase the chances. A Featured Snippet is created exclusively from the content and not from the meta description of a webpage.
Advantages and Disadvantages of Featured Snippets
Featured Snippets are often described as an SEO trend. At first glance, they may seem to hinder traffic. After all, the page does not need to be clicked for the information sought. However, the click-through rate and with it traffic to the website can also rise as a result of the increased visibility. Often, interest is piqued and the page is visited after all.
The Voice Search feature also serves to enhance the search experience. It has played an important role for search engines for several years and is very popular among users. Here, users search verbally for a short answer to any question. Voice search therefore also uses Featured Snippets. The increasing use of voice search thus contributes to the visibility of the respective website.
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