Gary Illyes said at the State of Search conference yesterday in his keynote that how featured snippets work, both in user interface and how they rank, is evolving. He said what works for them today, may not work tomorrow. He added that the rules behind why they work and how they work is changing.
Here are some tweets from people in attendance with what he said:
Featured Snippets are still under development and the rules are still changing. Via @methode #StateofSearch
— Alan Bleiweiss (@AlanBleiweiss) October 10, 2017
Featured snippets are still changing and evolving. What works to get them today may not work tomorrow. @methode #stateofsearch
— Christina Galownia (@cagalownia) October 10, 2017
Featured snippets have been very dynamic since they launched. We've seen many user interfaces with them, we've seen Google frequently swap in and out sites for the same query in that spot and we've seen variations of uses of it with AMP.
So we all know it has been changing rapidly, which makes this topic fun.