Transcript
Hi guys, and welcome to another edition of Zupo SEO Talk & Tea.
Today's conversation is, 'What is a featured snippet?' Featured snippets have become relatively popular and en vogue for SEO discussions the last three or four years, so I thought it warranted a video to talk about what they actually are if you don't know what they are.
This is Zupo SEO Talk & Tea, so I need to introduce the tea before we talk SEO. It's a [Kemang 00:00:29] black tea. I bought this from a company called Tea Station. They're one of the OG boba shops. If you're watching this somewhere else maybe you call it boba tea, but they're one of the original boba shops, especially in the California area, Southern California area, that I remember. So I bought this black tea from them 6-7 years ago and I still have it. So, shows you how long this thing is. But let's go ahead and get brewing and talking about what a feature snippet is.
So, a feature snippet is kind of a... When I say, "New," I mean new in the last five years... New feature of Google Searches where they... If you've been using Google, you've noticed that there's a stark different from what Google looked like 10, 15 years ago compared to what they look like now. Currently, Google now pretty much looks very... the interface of their search is much more interactive. There's much more images, maps, it's not just text results anymore. Even though a lot of people think of Google as only Text results, it has changed very much.
So what a featured snippet is, is if you've ever Googled something and then you see a big box on the top, and there's just a box with like a black box around it, and then there's text, and they're really emphasizing the information in that box, that's what they call a featured snippet. A featured snippet can be in different places, but the most common that people discuss is the very top, and some people call it position zero. But a featured snippet is essentially that box that has the text, and sometimes it has a full answer or it has a elongated response.
So a featured snippet is when your site attains that box, and then you're essentially placed above everything else, and then you have the answer. So sometimes an image is included. The famous case that people know is that if you type in lyrics, sometimes they'll have the entire lyrics in that box. It really varies on what the format is. There isn't just one way, but I think the traditional way is just a box answer, sometimes an image, and then on the bottom it'll source where the site is from.
So a feature snippet is what they call position zero. It's what they call when you're doing Google Search results, it's a little different search listing. So a featured snippet is your ability to kind of change the way you look on Google Searches, and so a featured snippet is a great way for your company to stand out if you want that position. Now I will note that featured snippets can vary a lot. So you can have varied many different kinds of featured snippets. So as I'm saying that, maybe that's where a video can be made, or a guide, or a video guide be made about all the different snippets that you can have. Because I will say that the snippets and featured snippets are not as straightforward as you might think. I'll have another video about it, but featured snippets have their own kind of controversy in that people who have attained them actually don't want them.
So the thing to remember is that a featured snippet is something that you can attain with your website. Oftentimes to attain the featured snippet, you need to be on the first page first. If your company isn't on the first page of Google already, it'll be difficult for you to attain the featured snippet. So just again, but in summary, this will for a video, a featured snippet is that box where it kind of calls out text. It might be just like a paragraph, or it might be even lyrics and it has an image and just sources your site, and they've placed it above the other search results, and it looks bigger, cleaner, and just stands out more than other search results.
That's kind of what a featured snippet is. And essentially sometimes it's great for your company to have because they will place you on the top. But if you're interested to know why there's controversy, I'm going to film another video talking about that and then we can kind of dive in to what the controversy is and how you should navigate understanding if you want featured snippets for yourself, or if you feel like you should kind of shelve it. I'm going to go ahead and leave it at that. I'm going to go ahead and pour my tea out.
If you guys found that video valuable and you liked what you saw, please like and subscribe. I'm going to go ahead and have my black tea now. I hope to see you guys again soon. Thanks, everybody.