Google Featured Snippets: Bad Thing or the Ultimate SEO Goal?

[jrineakter]

Google has been criticized for displaying a lot of information directly above the search results by means of various types of snippets. By immediately displaying relevant information, they improve the user experience of the searcher on the one hand, but on the other hand it ensures that people click less often on organic search results. You can then rank high for certain search terms, but this has less value if no one actually clicks on your website. However, there is a trump card: ranking for the so-called 'featured snippet' of Google.


Information from Google's database
For many search terms, Google shows information from its own database. For example, search for 'Feyenoord results' and Google neatly shows a snippet with the three most recent dominican republic telegram number list Feyenoord results. The snippet can also be expanded to show a larger list of results. These snippets are shown above the first organic search result.

Example of a featured snippet in Google.nl

Although this information is of course extremely useful for the user, the websites about Feyenoord and about football are stuck with the consequences, because the chance that searchers will click on these search results is now very small. On the other hand, it has been known for some time that Google is increasingly focusing on search intent and user-friendliness , so from that point of view it makes sense that they show as much information as possible in the easiest way possible.

Another form of directly displaying relevant information is via 'web definitions'. Here Google takes definitions from trusted websites with a high authority. In most cases this is Wikipedia. These results are also shown above the first organic search result.

Google as an encyclopedia

Featured Snippets: content directly from third parties
Not so long ago, Google started showing 'featured snippets'. These snippets also appear at the top of the search results, but the big difference is that these snippets come directly from third-party websites. As far as we know, all websites can qualify for these snippets and it is therefore possible to rank for them. I have not yet succeeded in getting these snippets to appear on the Dutch version of Google, but the American/English version has these snippets in abundance.

With these snippets, Google scrapes content directly from a website and displays the most important points at the top of the search results, with the source below. These snippets are frequently shown for how-questions. In most cases, the snippet provides enough information to answer the question, but you will still need to click on the link to learn more about the topic or see a more detailed explanation.