Definition
A featured snippet is the highlighted answer box at the top of Google's regular results, lifted from a page to answer the query outright. It is the predecessor to AI Overviews and still relevant in a hybrid search world.
On this page
At a glance
- Categories Core Concept
- Related fields SEO
- Difficulty Beginner
How Featured Snippet Works
Google sometimes pulls a paragraph, list, or table from a page and shows it in a box above the normal results, with credit. Winning that box has long been prime placement, and the habits that win it, direct answers and clean structure, are exactly what AI engines reward too.
Why Featured Snippet Matters
Snippets taught marketers to write extractable, get-to-the-point answers, which is the same skill AI search asks for. They also still appear, so the work pays off across both the classic and AI parts of the results page.
Frequently Asked Questions
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Are snippets going away?
They still show up, though AI Overviews now sit above them for a lot of queries.
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How do I win one?
Answer the question directly and early on the page, in a format Google can lift cleanly.