Google Featured Snippets Are Impacted By Algorithmic Updates

Nov 7, 2019 - 7:52 am 1 by

Google Rock Boat

Dr. Pete, Pete Meyers, from Moz, posted on Twitter "Any algo update that impacts query interpretation or relevance will impact Featured Snippets." This was retweeted by Google's John Mueller, so I guess that is a vote of confidence without passing DA ;-). In all seriousness, we've all seen it, featured snippets are very finicky and change a lot but algorithm updates can cause them as well.

Here is the tweet:

Google has said numerous times that specific algorithm updates directly impact featured snippets, including a freshness algorithm in February and even BERT - because Google understands these longer phrases better. But also, we know that the featured snippets algorithm is heavily using machine learning above and beyond just BERT. And Google has told us these featured snippets update frequently because of it.

That being said, most often, a featured snippet is also found in the top ten results on Google - often top three. But not always.

I have seen random examples over the years, have you?

Forum discussion at Twitter.

 

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