Google's John Mueller said there is no rule that a page has to rank in the top ten search result positions for it to be considered eligible for a featured snippet position.
The question was asked by Shubham Davey who wrote "if a page isn't ranking in the top 10 on SERPs, are those pages eligible for featured snippets?"
John Mueller replied on Twitter, "I don't think there's any hard rule like that; that would be weird."
Here are those tweets:
@dannysullivan, What happens before a page starts ranking for featured snippets? Do they rank on page #1 first & then move to position 0?
— Shubham Davey (@bydaveyji) August 22, 2023
Or pages from any position (even page #2 & beyond) on SERPs can rank for featured snippets?
I didn't read the link, but I don't think there's any hard rule like that; that would be weird.
— John Mueller (official) ยท #MaybeABot (@JohnMu) August 22, 2023
Pete Meyers from Moz also added his thoughts:
I did a study to try to replicate this after, but it's 1-1/2 years old and involved measuring something we can't observe without connecting SERPs across days (i.e. it's complicated) -- https://t.co/kLAei9CdGU
— Dr. Pete Meyers (@dr_pete) August 22, 2023
While it doesn't have to be the case where a featured snippet must be from a page that would rank well, it probably is mostly the case.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
