Featured snippet: what is it, and does it still exist?

What is a featured snippet?

The reversed format is described in the page Featured snippets and your website (December 10, 2025). According to Google Search Help, the featured snippet appears in three places: at the top of the results, in the “People also ask” box and next to Knowledge Graph information. Usually only one box is shown, sometimes several.

Google launched featured snippets in January 2014, according to a post by Danny Sullivan of January 30, 2018. The name describes the principle: the snippet is featured, that is, put forward. Google considers them especially useful on mobile and in voice search.

“Extrait optimisé” is Google’s term in French. The practitioners’ jargon appears neither in its page nor in its help article (checked on October 19, 2026). To place featured snippets within SEO as a whole, read our SEO guide.

Featured snippet, regular snippet, rich result, AI Overview: what are the differences?

These four elements of a results page do not draw their text from the same source.

The regular snippet relies mostly on the content, sometimes on the meta description (Google documentation of April 20, 2026). Rich results depend on structured data; featured snippets do not.

What formats can a featured snippet take?

Google’s pages describe four variants:

• Extracted text: a passage from the page, followed by its link.
• Video snippet: mentioned in the 2018 post.
• Several snippets for the same question, according to the help article and that post.
• Expanded questions: in Google’s Visual Elements gallery (February 4, 2026), each expanded question in “People also ask” shows a featured snippet.

Practitioners also talk about paragraph, list or table snippets: a typology based on observation, not Google’s. The percentages per format that circulate cite no primary source; we do not repeat them.

Do featured snippets still exist in 2026?

Yes, as far as the documentation goes: as of October 19, 2026, Google’s page on featured snippets is online (English version updated on December 10, 2025). Its documentation updates log contains no entry on featured snippets between January and October 16, 2026, although it announces removals, such as that of the FAQ rich result on May 8, 2026.

But they are shown much less often. Two studies with different scopes point the same way.

Ahrefs finds a correlation of 0.9 with the growth of AI Overviews. Its author, Ryan Law, points out that correlation is not causation, while judging it “very likely” that AI Overviews have superseded featured snippets. The academic audit, however, shows that the two often coexist, with contradictory information in 33% of the cases where both appear. Google has announced nothing. What can be said in 2026: a clear drop in display, a replacement that has not been demonstrated.

AI Overviews (“Aperçus IA” in French) and AI Mode arrived in France on July 22, 2026. Elev8 Lab has no commercial relationship with the vendors mentioned, including Ahrefs.

What do AI Overviews change?

To appear as a supporting link in an AI Overview or in AI Mode, a page must be indexed and eligible to be shown with a snippet. Google adds no other technical requirement, according to its page on AI features (December 10, 2025). In Search Console, an AI Overview occupies a single position, shared by all its links. Their effect on clicks is covered in our article on AI Overviews.

How does Google choose the featured snippet?

Google chooses on its own. To the question “How can I mark my page as a featured snippet?”, its documentation answers: “You can’t. Google systems determine whether a page would make a good featured snippet for a user’s search request, and if so, elevates it.”

According to Google Search Help, featured snippets are picked “based on how well they answer your question and how helpful they are”. They also follow their own rules, which do not apply to regular web results:

• on public interest topics (civics, history, medicine, science), a featured snippet must not contradict well-established consensus or expert opinion;
• Google removes a snippet that breaks these rules;
• if a site has many of them, Google stops showing featured snippets from that site.

On August 11, 2022, Pandu Nayak (Google) announced that the MUM model compared the callouts shown above a featured snippet with other quality sources, to check consensus. The same update reduced the triggering of featured snippets on questions with a false premise by 40%.

Historical marker: in 2017, an Ahrefs study of US keywords concluded that 99.58% of the pages shown in featured snippets already ranked in the top 10. This old figure describes a past situation, not a current rule.

How do you optimize a page for the featured snippet?

A featured snippet is worked on like the rest of your SEO content: one intent, one page, one clear answer. No method guarantees “position zero”, since the decision is Google’s. These five steps give it a passage that is easy to reuse.

1. Start from the queries you already rank for. The Search Console performance report lists them, with their average position.
2. Identify the question. Identify the search intent behind the question before writing; the “People also ask” box shows related questions.
3. Answer under the question. Place the answer right under a heading phrased as a question, in one or two sentences that make sense on their own.
4. Choose the right form. A definition calls for a sentence, a procedure for a numbered list, a comparison for a table, in native HTML (<ol>, <table>).
5. Keep the passage visible. A click on the featured snippet scrolls the page to the passage it shows; if Google cannot locate it, the user lands at the top of the page. Keep the answer visible and, on a public interest topic, consistent with the consensus.

The full method to get cited by AI builds on these principles.

How do you stop a page from appearing as a featured snippet?

Google provides three settings, described in its page on featured snippets and in the robots meta tag specification (updated on March 24, 2026):

• <meta name="robots" content="nosnippet">: blocks all snippets of the page, regular snippets included. According to Google, it is the only guaranteed solution.
• <div data-nosnippet>…</div>: excludes one passage. The attribute is used on span, div and section elements. If the nosnippet rule is also present, it takes precedence.
• <meta name="robots" content="max-snippet:50"> (example value): limits the length of snippets. A featured snippet only appears if enough text can be shown; lowering the value can therefore rule it out, without guarantee, since Google gives no minimum length.

How do you measure a featured snippet?

In Search Console, a featured snippet is measured like a regular result. According to Search Console Help, a click on its link counts as a click. Impressions and position follow the usual rules, and the snippet “typically” occupies position 1.

Two points make the data harder to read:

• Deduplication: on January 23, 2020, Google SearchLiaison announced that a page shown in the featured snippet was no longer repeated in the first page of results; the snippet counts as one of the ten listings. No source says whether the rule has changed since.
• AI Overviews: on June 3, 2026, Google launched performance reports dedicated to generative AI, open to all sites as of August 31, 2026. They give impressions by page, country, device and date; the launch post mentions neither queries nor clicks.