Change to featured snippets in SERPs

[StephanieNewton]

Hey all!

First-time poster here, so I hope I've put this in the right thread — I'm writing a blog on the recent update to featured snippets, whereby sites occupying the featured snippet/position zero, will no longer appear in the first page of organic SERPs (see Danny Sullivan's Tweet here).

It doesn't look like this will have any immediate effects on local search, but I'd be interested in hearing your thoughts on what impact this could have on local and/or how this has affected your attitude towards featured snippets? E.g. would you still recommend a client tries to rank for them, will you judge it on a case-by-case basis, etc?

Personally, I can't see it changing anyone's actions too drastically, but previously featured snippets were considered a sort of added bonus, so you might try to rank organically and get hold of position zero too, whereas now I'd really only try to rank organically for queries!

Thanks in advance and I'll look forward to hearing everyone's thoughts

 

[Yan Gilbert]

More likely to be on a case by case basis after data comes in, if traffic went down for a page, etc.
Or better optimization of the snippet text to try to get that click through. Just getting the FS is not enough anymore since you longer have that second chance.

 

[StephanieNewton]

Thanks for sharing your thoughts, Yan! That seems to be the general consensus at the moment. And I completely agree that this makes optimizing your FS to be as enticing and clickable as possible more important than ever.

I did see a handy tip someone shared on Twitter, which in theory should allow you to compare organic ranking (so you can decide whether trying for the featured snippet is worth it or not).

 

[JoyHawkins]

This one from Marie Haynes was really interesting.

 

[StephanieNewton]

This one from Marie Haynes was really interesting.

That is an interesting case! I've seen a few people comparing CTRs post-update and, so far, it looks like not having the featured snippet is beneficial. Although I suppose we'll see if anything changes once Google integrates the RHS featured snippet into the main results.