Featured Snippets Disappearing From SERPs

Google’s Featured Snippets are disappearing from SERPs.

They’re not gone wholly, but Google seems to be rolling back plenty and replacing with Knowledge Panels.

Perhaps Google has realised that webmasters have started to game these and the quality has suffered somewhat – a lot of those I see are poor.

Read more now in this extract from TWIS SEO News & Updates 24th November 2017.

#SEO #SEONews #FeaturedSnippets #KnowledgePanels #SERP

Key Issues Summary:

• After an extensive rollout of Featured Snippets into the SERP, it seems like Google may be rolling them back somewhat.
• Search Engine Land has reported a significant drop in the number of SERP with Featured Snippets displaying. Numbers vary but the initial figure seems to be around 2-6% of search results have had Featured Snippets removed.
• In some of their places, it seems like Knowledge Panels have taken root.

Key Actions To Take:

1. If you were relying on Featured Snippets, I would check those rankings and traffic pretty quickly.
2. There are still plenty of SERPs which generate Featured Snippets, so do keep building.
3. Realise, however, that their days may be numbered.
4. Click here to contact me to discuss generating Featured Snippets.

Insights & Discussion:

My experience of Featured Snippets was that a large number were poor, especially as they rolled out across a greater number of search results and webmasters started to target them more. The answers were either wrong, half-wrong, or correct, but only half the story.

Frankly, Featured Snippets were a tad under-whelming on the user experience side of things. I’d also say that as traffic-stealers from organic listings, I wouldn’t be that sorry to see them go.

Only time will tell if this is the beginning of the end (like rel=author), or if it is a tactical retreat, or some other algorithmic weirdness from The Google.

More Information:

• Search Engine Land – Featured Snippet Report
• No Featured Snippets In Google Search Console
• Google Testing Featured Snippets

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We recently released the super-exciting The State of SEO in mid-2017. Read it now.

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• Featured Snippets are rolling back from something like 2-6% of search results.
• They are being replaced in most instances with Knowledge Panels.
• It’s not known if this is a test, or if this is permanent.
• Read The State of SEO in mid-2017.
• Read about how Google’s Mobile First Index is not Mobile Friendly.
• Finally, get your content ranking well on Google by starting to understand Find Crawl Index.

Thanks for reading. If you would like to discuss what these changes mean for your web property, or would like to know how to implement them, please feel free to contact me.

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