It seems that Google has stopped serving featured snippets in its search results this morning. It started around 7 AM ET today, just about an hour ago. I cannot trigger any featured snippets to load.
It might be some sort of rendering or serving bug or maybe Google decided to ditch featured snippets. It can't be intentional? I suspect this is some sort of serving/rendering bug, just like we saw with local results not serving yesterday.
Update: Featured snippets now have retuned about 2 hours after they went missing - I guess it was a bug.
Try surfacing any featured snippet both in Google Search classic and the Search Generative Experience, you can't. I mean, I can't and neither can a ton of people.
I first spotted this via Shameem Adhikarath who posted about this on X and then I asked Glenn Gabe if my eyes were tricking me and he also confirmed and posted on X and wrote, "Heads-up. I'm sure this is a bug, but featured snippets aren't showing at all based on a number of tests I'm running. Here are two examples. Let's see if they return soon, or not."
He also shared some screenshots of before and after:
BEFORE:
AFTER:
BEFORE:
AFTER:
Here is a video cast from Shameem:
Here are more examples pic.twitter.com/TYfvoJ8yo6
— Shameem Adhikarath (@shemiadhikarath) February 15, 2024
Do featured snippets render for you?
Maybe that is why we see a lot of volatility today in the Google search results?
Update: It does seem to work for limited queries:
I can't get featured snippets to appear for those queries but on my phone at least, I can get snippets for some. pic.twitter.com/ecau1Od7QD
— Marie Haynes (@Marie_Haynes) February 15, 2024
Update 2: Featured snippets have returned, I guess it was a bug:
I'm seeing featured snippets back now. So the issues is being corrected. pic.twitter.com/XEE2Im0kpI
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) February 15, 2024
Forum discussion at X.
