After Google removed the original instant of a featured snippet’s URL from the SERP, we dug into 10,000 keywords to see where (or even if) snippets are being sourced.
In January of 2020, we lost an important piece of SEO data. Prior to then, featured snippets were duplicated in the primary organic rankings. For example, here’s the top of a Google search for “amphibians” on January 21, 2020:
Note that the featured snippet was promoted from the number two organic position, hopping over (pun intended) a powerful number one Wikipedia result. Back then, we found that — while a featured snippet could be promoted from anywhere on page one, theoretically — most came from the top 3–4 organic positions.
Soon after, Google removed these duplicate listings and began treating featured snippets as a single, organic number one position. At that point, we lost the ability to track how (and even if) featured snippets were being promoted from lower on the page.
Measuring the invisible
Like any organic ranking, featured snippets are naturally volatile. Not only do they change owners, but they even appear and disappear from any given search day-to-day. So, what if we looked for those URLs on the days that featured snippets disappeared?
Using the MozCast tracking data set of 10,000 keywords, we retraced the history of all of the SERPs with featured snippets. This is easier to explain with an example. Consider this featured snippet on a search for “IRS tax tables” on February 28, 2022:
NerdWallet captures the featured snippet and the top spot here, with the IRS in the number two position. As luck would have it, the same search captured on February 27 had no featured snippet:
While NerdWallet is the second domain listed, it comes after four IRS.gov results (including three indented) and a “People also ask” box. Most SEOs would count this as the number five organic position. So, NerdWallet effectively hopped four spots when they took the featured snippet.
Reconstructing the past
We applied this historical reconstruction programmatically to the MozCast data on November 11, 2021 (as part of a larger STAT research project) and found the following organic rankings for featured snippet URLs on days when the featured snippet disappeared:
We repeated this analysis on February 1, 2022, with very similar results. While the analysis makes some necessary assumptions (notably that the organic ranking from one day back in history is stable), these results are consistent with what we saw prior to January 2020.
Hopping the gap
Uncovering the invisible, it’s clear that you can still hop the gap. While we naturally count a featured snippet in 2022 as the number one position, and it is an organic result, that result is still promoted via a re-ranking process from potentially any page-one position.
Note that about 75 percent of featured snippets do come from the 1–3 organic positions, so traditional SEO is still a huge part of the process.
That said, writing well-targeted content that matches the intent and format of the featured snippet (including lists and videos where appropriate) could help you hop from a lower position to the number one position and overtake a competitor with a bigger budget or brand.
Read more
As tracking and ranking for “position zero” has become a vital aspect of everyday SEO strategy, we give you the latest findings from 2021 (across more than 5 million keywords) on featured snippet prevalence, formats, and rankings. Download the report here.
