Featured snippets

What are featured snippets?

A featured snippet is a special block Google displays at the top of search results (above the blue links) for some informational queries¹. The snippet shows extracted content from a single source page (a paragraph, list, table, or video), with attribution and link to the source. The format optimizes for queries phrased as questions ("how do I...", "what is...", "why does..."). Featured snippets are also commonly called "Position 0" or "Position Zero" in SEO industry shorthand; these are informal practitioner terms, not Google's official terminology.

Featured snippets emerged around 2014 and became the dominant SERP feature for question-form queries by the late 2010s. They were the original surface that Answer Engine Optimization (AEO) grew up around. Before generative AI search, "winning the featured snippet" was the AEO end goal.

Status in 2026

Co-existing with AI Overview, increasingly subsumed. On queries where Google ships AI Overview, the featured snippet often does not appear (or appears in a less prominent position below AI Overview). On queries without AI Overview, featured snippets historically maintained the highest organic CTR among SERP features, according to recurring SEO industry CTR studies (Ahrefs, Advanced Web Ranking, Moz tracking). As of 2026, CTR data is increasingly distorted by AI Overview's appearance above featured snippets on overlapping query sets, so direct 2026 CTR comparisons across queries are difficult; for queries where AI Overview is absent, featured snippets continue to be a high-value SERP target. The transition is gradual and surface-specific: informational queries lean AI Overview, transactional queries still lean featured snippet or none.

Note on this entry's territory (paired with the answer block entry's mirror observation): featured snippets as a Google SERP feature are vendor-canonical: Google's developers.google.com/search/docs publishes snippet types, eligibility criteria, and exclusion controls. The specific selection algorithm (which top-10 page wins the snippet for a given query) is non-vendor-canonical because Google does not publish ranking details. This entry's how-to content (question-form H2 / 40-60 word answer block / FAQPage JSON-LD) sits in practitioner-discipline territory: writers can directly measure snippet eligibility via the incognito test below, without needing vendor-confirmed selection mechanisms. Paired with the answer block entry: that entry covers the smallest citable content unit (the writing discipline); this entry covers the Google SERP feature that historically targeted those units (the surface).

How to apply

Featured snippet optimization in 2026 doubles as AI Overview optimization. The patterns overlap. Three concrete moves:

• Restructure pages around question-form H2 headings: each H2 phrased as a real question ("How does X work?") with the answer immediately following, roughly 40-60 words (common practitioner heuristic for snippet-friendly length, though optimal varies by query and platform). This shape wins both featured snippets and AI Overview citation.
• Ship FAQPage JSON-LD where the page has genuine Q&A content (typically 3-5 question-answer pairs is a practitioner heuristic; Google's FAQPage docs do not specify a minimum or maximum count, only that Q&A should reflect real questions on the page). Use the Rich Results Tester while it still accepts FAQ (Google is retiring FAQ support in the Rich Results Test in June 2026); after that, fall back to the schema.org validator. Note that Google fully deprecated FAQ rich results on May 7, 2026, so the markup no longer earns visual SERP treatment, and structured data does not trigger featured snippets in either direction (Google's systems select snippet content from page text, not from schema markup). Ship FAQPage for underlying Q&A structure and possible AI engine parsing.
• Test for snippet eligibility via incognito Google: search the target question, see whether the snippet appears, screenshot which source wins. Iterating against incognito results lets you reverse-engineer the gap.

What to skip: chasing featured snippets on queries that have moved to AI Overview. Click-through impact varies by query type and answer completeness, but the high-traffic informational queries where featured snippets historically drove the most clicks are increasingly the queries where AI Overview now sits above them. Invest in AI Overview citation tracking on those queries instead.

How it relates to other concepts

• Predecessor SERP feature to AI Overview for question-form queries; the two now co-exist, with AI Overview increasingly taking the position featured snippets previously held on informational queries.
• Origin surface for Answer Engine Optimization before generative AI search.
• Surface that historically targeted answer blocks as content units. The answer block entry covers the writing-side discipline; this entry covers the SERP feature it was optimized for.
• Common output target for FAQPage schema when the page ranks in top-10, with the caveat that schema markup does not trigger featured snippet eligibility; Google's systems select snippet content from page text directly. See the FAQ schema entry for the May 7, 2026 rich-results deprecation context.