Featured Snippet

A Featured Snippet, also called “zero result,” is a short text snippet that usually appears at the top of Google’s search results, above the organic results.

It is designed to quickly respond to the user’s search query directly within the SERP, and essentially allow a person to get the information they are interested in even without having to click through to one of the placed sites.

Technically speaking, these snippets come from already indexed web pages, and their selection is fully automated, based on Google’s algorithms that determine what content constitutes a valid and relevant featured snippet for a specific search query.

For years now, there has been a love/hate relationship toward featured snippets, between those who see them as a means by which Google steals clicks from the sites from which it gets its information and those, on the other hand, who highlight their opportunities in terms of the visibility and traffic they would provide to the sites that gain them.