Featured Snippets Drop
On February 19, MozCast measured a remarkable drop (40% day-over-day) in SERPs with Included Bits, with no immediate signs of healing. Here's a two-week view (February get more info 10-23):.
Are we losing our minds?
After the year we've all had, it's always good to check our sanity. In this case, other data sets revealed a drop on the same date, however the severity of the drop differed dramatically. I checked our STAT data across desktop queries (en-US only)-- over two million everyday SERPs-- and saw the following:.
While mobile SERPs in STAT showed higher overall frequency, the pattern was very similar, with a 9% day-over-day-drop on February 19 and an overall drop of about 12% because February 10. This describes the general greater frequency in STAT, as longer phrases tend to consist of concerns and other natural-language inquiries that are more likely to drive Featured Snippets.
Why the big difference?
What's driving the 40% drop in MozCast and, presumably, more competitive terms? First things first: we have actually hand-verified a number of these losses, and there is no proof of measurement mistake. One helpful element of the 10K MozCast keywords is that they're uniformly divided throughout 20 historical Google Ads categories. While some modifications effect industry classifications similarly, the Featured Snippet loss revealed a significant range of impact:.
Competitive health care terms lost more than two-thirds of their Featured Bits. It turns out that a lot of these terms had other prominent features, such as Medical Knowledge Panels. Here are some high-volume terms that lost Included Bits in the Health classification:.
diabetes.
lupus.
autism.fibromyalgia.
acne.While Financing had a much lower preliminary frequency of Featured Snippets, Finance SERPs likewise saw huge losses on February 19. Some high-volume examples consist of:.
pension.
threat management.shared funds.
roth ira.investment.
Like the Health classification, these terms have a Knowledge Panel in the right-hand column on desktop, with some fundamental details (mostly from Wikipedia/Wikidata). Once again, these are competitive "head" terms, where Google was displaying numerous SERP functions prior to February 19.
What about passage indexing?
Could this be connected to the "passage indexing" update that rolled out around February 10? While there's a lot we still don't understand about the impact of that upgrade, and while that update affected rankings and highly likely impacted natural snippets of all types, there's no reason to think that upgrade would affect whether an Included Bit is displayed for any provided inquiry. While the timelines overlap a little, these occasions are most likely separate.
Is the snippet sky falling?
While the 40% drop in Featured Snippets in MozCast seems genuine, the impact was mainly on much shorter, more competitive terms and specific market categories. For those in YMYL classifications, it certainly makes good sense to assess the effect on your rankings and search traffic.
Normally speaking, this is a common pattern with SERP functions-- Google ramps them up over time, then reaches a threshold where quality starts to suffer, and then decreases the volume. As Google ends up being more positive in the quality of their Included Snippet algorithms, they may turn that volume back up. I certainly don't expect Featured Snippets to disappear any time soon, and they're still extremely common in longer, natural-language queries.
Consider, too, that some of these Featured Bits might just have been redundant. Prior to February 19, someone searching for "shared fund" may have seen this Featured Snippet:.
Google is presuming a "What is/are ...?" question here, but "shared fund" is an extremely uncertain search that could have several intents. At the exact same time, Google was currently showing an Understanding Graph entity in the right-hand column (on desktop), presumably from relied on sources:.
Why show both, specifically if Google has concerns about quality in a classification where they're very sensitive to quality issues? At the same time, while it might sting a bit to lose these Featured Snippets, consider whether they were really providing. While this term may be excellent for vanity, how typically are people at the very beginning of a search journey-- who may not even know what a mutual fund is-- going to transform into a consumer? Oftentimes, they might be leaping straight to the Understanding Panel and not even taking the Included Snippet into account.
For Moz Pro clients, remember that you can easily track Included Snippets from the "SERP Features" page (under "Rankings" in the left-hand nav) and filter for keywords with Included Bits. You'll get a report something like this-- try to find the scissors icon to see where Included Bits are appearing and whether you (blue) or a rival (red) are recording them:.
Whatever the impact, one thing remains real-- Google giveth and Google taketh away. Unlike losing a ranking or losing an Included Bit to a competitor, there's extremely little you can do to reverse this type of sweeping modification. For websites in heavily-impacted verticals, we can only keep an eye on the scenario and attempt to examine our new reality.
Update: Visit word-count.
I recognized that we might look at word-count in the STAT data to test the theory that shorter search inquiries (which are typically both more competitive and more uncertain) were hit harder by this upgrade. Here's the breakdown of STAT's 2M desktop (en-US) keywords ...
