Featured Snippets Drop
Are we losing our minds?
After the year we've all had, it's always good to inspect our sanity. In this case, other data sets showed a drop on the same date, but the seriousness of the drop varied drastically. I examined our STAT information throughout desktop questions (en-US just)-- over 2 million daily SERPs-- and saw the following:.
While mobile SERPs in STAT revealed higher total prevalence, the pattern was extremely similar, with a 9% day-over-day-drop on February 19 and a total drop of about 12% because February 10. Keep in mind that, while there is substantial overlap, the desktop and mobile data sets may consist of different search phrases. While the desktop data set is currently about 2.2 M day-to-day SERPs, mobile is closer to 1.7 M.
Note that the MozCast 10K keywords are skewed (deliberately) towards shorter, more competitive phrases, whereas STAT includes many more "long-tail" phrases. This describes the general greater occurrence in STAT, as longer expressions tend to consist of concerns and other natural-language queries that are most likely to drive Featured Snippets.
Why the huge difference?
What's driving the 40% drop in MozCast and, most likely, more competitive terms? While some modifications impact market classifications similarly, the Featured Snippet loss revealed a remarkable variety of impact:.
diabetes.
lupus.
autism.fibromyalgia.
acne.While Finance had gold coast seo a much lower initial occurrence of Featured Snippets, Financing SERPs likewise saw huge losses on February 19. Some high-volume examples include:.
pension.
danger management.mutual funds.
roth ira.financial investment.
Like the Health category, these terms have an Understanding Panel in the right-hand column on desktop, with some fundamental information (primarily from Wikipedia/Wikidata). Once again, these are competitive "head" terms, where Google was displaying multiple SERP functions prior to February 19.Both Health and Finance search phrases line up closely with so-called YMYL (Your Cash or Your Life) material areas, which, in Google's own words "... might potentially affect an individual's future joy, health, financial stability, or security." These are locations where Google is plainly worried about the quality of the responses they provide.
What about passage indexing?
Could this be connected to the "passage indexing" upgrade that rolled out around February 10? While there's a lot we still don't know about the effect of that update, and while that update impacted rankings and likely impacted natural snippets of all types, there's no reason to think that update would affect whether or not a Featured Snippet is displayed for any offered query. While the timelines overlap a little, these occasions are probably separate.
Is the bit sky falling?
While the 40% drop in Featured Snippets in MozCast seems real, the effect was mostly on much shorter, more competitive terms and specific industry categories. For those in YMYL classifications, it certainly makes sense to examine 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 limit where quality starts to suffer, and after that lowers the volume. As Google ends up being more positive in the quality of their Featured Snippet algorithms, they might turn that volume back up. I definitely do not expect Featured Snippets to vanish whenever soon, and they're still very common in longer, natural-language queries.
Think about, too, that some of these Featured Snippets might just have been redundant. Prior to February 19, someone searching for "mutual fund" might have seen this Included Bit:.
Google is presuming a "What is/are ...?" concern here, but "shared fund" is a highly uncertain search that might have several intents. At the same time, Google was already showing an Understanding Graph entity in the right-hand column (on desktop), presumably from relied on sources:.
Why display both, specifically if Google has concerns about quality in a category where they're very conscious quality concerns? At the exact same time, while it may sting a bit to lose these Featured Bits, think about whether they were truly providing. While this term may be terrific for vanity, how typically are people at the very start of a search journey-- who may not even know what a mutual fund is-- going to convert into a customer? In a lot of cases, they might be jumping straight to the Understanding Panel and not even taking the Featured Bit into account.
For Moz Pro consumers, keep in mind 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 Snippets. You'll get a report something like this-- try to find the scissors icon to see where Included Snippets are appearing and whether you (blue) or a rival (red) are capturing 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 really little you can do to reverse this type of sweeping change. For sites in heavily-impacted verticals, we can just keep an eye on the situation and try to examine our brand-new reality.
Update: Drop by word-count.
I recognized that we could take a look at word-count in the STAT information to test the theory that much shorter search queries (which are generally both more competitive and more ambiguous) were struck harder by this update. Here's the breakdown of STAT's 2M desktop (en-US) keywords ...There's very little nuance here-- 1-word questions were clobbered in this update, 2-word queries dropped substantially greater than the STAT average, and 3+- word inquiries were struck much less. Why these questions were struck isn't as clear, however the effect on extremely brief queries is clear.