Featured snippets

Featured snippets, also known as Featured Snippets, are snippets that are taken from a web page and appear at the top of Google search results. They are designed to give the user a quick answer to their question. These snippets can be a direct route to greater visibility on the web because the snippets are placed at the very top of organic search results.

By building your content around these snippets, you have a greater chance of achieving high visibility on the web and attracting more visitors to your site. 

Featured snippets should not be confused with rich snippets.

Below you can see an example of a highlighted excerpt.

Featured Snippets play a big role in search engine optimization (SEO) because they can drive significant traffic to your website. If Google uses text from your website for a Featured Snippet, your page will appear at the top of the search results, which can generate a lot of clicks.

However, featured snippets also potentially create a lot of zero click searches because a user with a simple search can get a direct answer at the top of the search results without having to click anything. For example, if a user searches for a simple question like: "When is Halloween", there's no need to click to the website to read more when the search results say "Friday, June 23rd" at the top of the results.

Despite zero click searches, it's beneficial for you to try to get Google to select a snippet of text from your website as a featured snippet. This demonstrates credibility on Google and can potentially create more brand awareness in the minds of potential customers.

There are four main types of featured snippets: paragraph, list, table and video snippets.

Paragraph snippets are the most common type of snippets that display a snippet of text from a website. This type of snippet is popularly known as "the Definition Box" and can also contain images. As the phrase indicates, paragraph snippets attempt to provide a concrete definition.

List snippets show step-by-step instructions or information in point form. There are ordered and unordered list snippets.

Ordered list snippets are often used for procedures where the items require a specific order. For example, the search "how to bake a sand cake". Here it is important that the dough is made before the cake goes into the oven, so ordered list snippets are the way to go.

Unordered list snippets are used when the order of the items does not have significant relevance. For example, if the search is "the best parks in Copenhagen", it doesn't matter if Kongens Have or Kalvebod Fælled comes first.

Table snippets display data organized in rows and columns and are often used to show comparisons of prices, exchange rates or other numerical values.

Video snippets, also known as featured clips, are used when Google's algorithm determines that a video is the most complete answer to a search. These are often "how to" searches where a video tutorial is the best search result.

Your content can be selected for any type of snippet depending on how it meets the user's needs.