Google is Messing Around with Featured Snippets
Published on February 3, 2020
Published on Wealthy Affiliate — a platform for building real online businesses with modern training and AI.
Google is Messing Around with Featured Snippets
Recently there have been some changes to the way Google displays search results. And they're still experimenting.
They've suddenly changed the rules for featured snippets. Previously, an article in a featured snippet was also listed on page 1 in the organic results. Now, the article in the featured snippet only appears in the featured snippet itself.
What the Heck is a Featured Snippet?
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There's a huge difference between organic results snippets and featured snippets. Featured snippets provide almost enough information to make clicking through to the website unnecessary. Plain old "snippets" are what we see for the rest of the organic results on the page.
Today, featured snippets appear just below the ads and above the "People also ask" section. The organic search results follow. I say "today" because over the next few weeks Google is playing around with how it displays search results, trying to provide the best user experience for its searchers. Yeah, they really don't care about us website owners.
What Google says about Featured Snippets
My good friend, Loes, recently wrote about this Is Google Stealing Content?
One other thing I've noticed is that you may or may not see websites' favicons within the search results as they try out different presentations.
The big question is: do articles in the featured snippets get more or less traffic than the organic results. The jury is still out on that one.
So do you try to get into or out of the featured snippet malarky? My advice is to wait until the dust settles and some authority websites have done some research based on real data.
Don't panic! (yet)
What changes have you noticed lately in the SERPS? Please share in the comments below.
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