Google: There Is No Snippet Wide Ban

Over the past few months, there have been some SEO folks asking me about Google's snippet wide ban. I have never heard or seen such a thing, so I just replied as such and told them that rich results and features can go away after a core update is released - it's a quality thing.

So yes, I do see complaints after a core update that a site's rich results might disappear. And you do see more complaints of this after core updates but I have not seen a complete ban of rich results or snippets in general.

John Mueller of Google actually addressed the exact video that was sent to me and said on Twitter "There's certainly no "sitewide snippet ban".

Here is the video floating around:

It specifically mentions the November 2021 core update - keep in mind, there were also spam updates in November 2021. And like I said before, these updates can impact if sites do gain or lose rich results and rich snippets.

John actually replied numerous times the other day to these complaints adding "From our POV those are just different kinds of snippets. We still show snippets for pages from there overall. There's nothing technically different that you'd need to do to allow showing of featured snippets, they aren't guaranteed, nor always shown in the same ways."

Here are those responses:

Is there a short version, with just a URL and a screenshot before & after? There's certainly no "sitewide snippet ban". If you're seeing specific issues, I'd recommend posting in the help forum with the details.

— 🐐 John 🐐 (@JohnMu) February 15, 2022

@JohnMu Additional information: Snippets still appear for all relevant searches - just only for competitors.

— Martin FTW (@MartinFTW1) February 15, 2022

@JohnMu https://t.co/jpedI3FMzD and many other sites I've checked lost ALL featured snippets to competitors in late November 2021.

What has been done wrong on the site to cause what seems like a ban from ranking for featured snippets at all?

— Martin FTW (@MartinFTW1) February 15, 2022

@JohnMu

Does it sound like a bug to you that it is IMPOSSIBLE to win featured snippets sitewide? (For sites pre-Nov-2021 having 50+ features snippets and hundreds of articles across the site)

If yes, is that something you will look more into?

— Martin FTW (@MartinFTW1) February 15, 2022

I figured I'd share this wider at this point, since a Googler commented.

Forum discussion at Twitter.

Yeah, that's a possible reason. But it doesn't have to be just that.

— 🐐 John 🐐 (@JohnMu) February 16, 2022