Featured Snippet

A featured snippet is a specially formatted box at the top of the search results pageThe Search Engine Results Page (SERP) is the page a search engine returns after a query. Besides the organic listings it often contains extra elements such as ads, featured snippets or AI Overviews.Open glossary entry →. Google takes a short text excerpt, a list or a table from a ranking page and shows it as a direct answer.

For websites this has two sides:

• If your own page is used as the source, it gains extra visibility at the top of the SERP.
• If the snippetA snippet is the compact display of a result in the search results, usually made up of a title, URL and description. It is what users see before clicking.Open glossary entry → answers the question fully, users may no longer click, creating a zero-click searchA zero-click search is a query where the answer appears directly in the search results and the user clicks no listing. SERP features and AI Overviews amplify this effect.Open glossary entry →.

Featured snippetsA featured snippet is a highlighted answer excerpt that Google displays above the classic results. It answers a query directly and is often called position zero.Open glossary entry → are among the SERP features that can change click distribution. If the click-through rateThe click-through rate (CTR) indicates how many users click a search result relative to the number of times it is shown (impressions). It reflects how appealing a listing appears in search.Open glossary entry → drops despite a stable position, a competitor's snippet is often a cause. In terms of content, clearly structured sections, concise definitions, lists and tables improve the chance of being selected as the source.