Featured snippet
A featured snippet is a highlighted answer block in Google that appears above the organic results, giving a direct summary pulled from a web page.
A featured snippet is the answer block Google sometimes shows above the results page, even before the #1 position. Usually 40–60 words of text pulled from a page, with the source URL below. Featured snippets appear in several formats: paragraph (most common), list, table and video. Though they were the holy grail of SEO from 2015–2022, they're partly displaced by AI Overview. Still an important GEO signal: featured-snippet-worthy content has the best chance of being cited in AI answers too.
Example
A user searches 'what is canonical tag'. Google shows a featured snippet with a definition pulled from the Search Central docs, followed by ten organic results.
Frequently asked questions
How do I win a featured snippet?
Rank in the top 10 for the query, answer the question literally in 40–60 words ideally right under an h2 that rephrases the query, and use appropriate structure (list for 'how', table for comparisons, paragraph for 'what is').
What's the difference from AI Overview?
Featured snippet is a literal quote from one page; AI Overview is an AI-generated summary from multiple sources. Snippet has one winner, Overview has three to five.
Related terms
Further reading
- → Our service: SEO