Definition
Also written: position zero
A featured snippet is a short extract Google promotes above the standard results to answer a query directly, drawn from a page already ranking for it. Formats include a paragraph, an ordered or unordered list, and a table, and the format Google chooses follows the shape of the query.
Snippets are selected from pages that already rank well, so a snippet strategy that ignores ranking is not a strategy. The realistic lever is formatting: a concise direct answer positioned immediately under a heading that matches the question phrasing.
Snippets are volatile. The same query can show different sources week to week, and a page can lose one without losing its ranking.
The usual error
Where this goes wrong in practice
Writing a 300-word preamble before the answer. If the direct response is buried under context-setting, there is nothing clean to extract.
Related terms
Answer engine optimization (AEO)
Answer engine optimization is structuring content so a direct answer can be lifted cleanly into a featured snippet, a People Also Ask entry, a voice response or an AI summary. It predates the current AI wave — the original concern was voice assistants — and overlaps heavily with both SEO and GEO.
DefinitionPeople Also Ask (PAA)
People Also Ask is the expandable block of related questions Google shows within results, each opening to a short extracted answer and a source link. The questions are generated from real related queries, which makes the block a usable source of genuine subheadings.
DefinitionAI Overviews
AI Overviews are Google-generated summaries shown above traditional results for some queries, assembled from pages in the ordinary search index and shown with links to the sources used. Eligibility requires that a page is already indexable and snippet-eligible in normal Search.
DefinitionBreadcrumbList schema
BreadcrumbList markup describes a page’s position in the site hierarchy as an ordered list. Google uses it to replace the raw URL in a result with a readable trail, which is one of the few rich results that still reliably renders.
DefinitionCanonical URL
A canonical URL is the address a site nominates as the authoritative version of a page when several URLs serve equivalent content. It is declared with a rel="canonical" link element, and it is a strong hint to search engines rather than a directive they are obliged to follow.
DefinitionCrawl budget
Crawl budget is the number of URLs a search engine will fetch from a site in a given period, set by how much load the server can absorb and how much demand the engine has for the site’s content. It becomes a practical constraint mainly on large sites.
DefinitionE-E-A-T
E-E-A-T stands for experience, expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness — the framework Google’s human quality raters use to assess page and site quality. Google states it is not itself a ranking factor; it describes what the systems are being tuned to approximate, and it matters most on topics that affect money or wellbeing.
DefinitionFAQ schema
FAQ schema (schema.org FAQPage) marks up question-and-answer content so machines can read the pairs. It is still a valid schema type, but Google discontinued the FAQ rich result for nearly all sites starting in May 2026, with phased removal from Search Console tooling through that August.
DefinitionGoogle Business Profile (GBP)
Google Business Profile is the free listing that makes a business eligible for the map pack and the knowledge panel in local results. It requires verification, and it requires either a physical address customers can visit or a declared service area for businesses that travel to customers.
Definition