On February 19th or so, Google significantly dropped the number of times featured snippets would show up in the Google Search results. Well, as of Friday morning, March 12th, it looks like the percentage of time Google shows featured snippets in the results are back to normal.
Here are screenshots from the tracking tools showing them return to normal:
Looks like it is back to the normal saturation that it was prior to the drop on February 19th.
Glenn Gabe was the first to spot this I believe:
Big news. Featured snippets that were removed are returning as of yesterday. I’m seeing sites impacted show an uptick in visibility for FS. And checking the ones that dropped show FS returning to the SERPs. Very interesting… @rustybrick @lilyraynyc @dr_pete @MordyOberstein pic.twitter.com/1ZkbRep62Y
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) March 12, 2021
More on the return of featured snippets. It sure looks like a near-full return for sites that were impacted in February (where Google removed featured snippets from the SERPs for head terms). Check out the trending for FS overall, & then for sites impacted when filtering by FS’s: pic.twitter.com/flXQwGXRlO
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) March 14, 2021
My gut was that the drop was not intentional and it was a bug – but my gut has been wrong before…
Forum discussion at Twitter.