A couple of weeks ago we reported a steep dive in the number of featured snippets Google showed in its search results. Those numbers have not improved and not it is settling in that this may be the new norm – for now. Glenn Gabe shared some examples of sites that lost featured snippets on Twitter.
The point of the tweets was to show the obvious, if you rank number one in the organic spot and the featured snippet position is removed, it is probably not a huge deal. But if your organic ranking is position five but you held a featured snippet and that position is gone, it can be a huge deal.
Here are the tweets showing this from Glenn:
And the second set tells a much different story. https://t.co/rytILS7r2l had the featured snippet, but dropped to #5 after the FS was removed. That was its organic ranking w/out the FS. Healthline moved from #2 to #1. Clearly there’s going to be a drop in clicks for VWH. pic.twitter.com/MYOw4UJDAZ
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) March 5, 2021
If you lose a featured snippet to a competitor, you can try to win it back. If the featured snippet position is gone completely, then you need to work on improving your organic rank.
The featured snippet decline started around February 19, 2021. So was your traffic impacted by this Google change?
Forum discussion at Twitter.