Pages that earn a featured snippet will no longer repeat as a regular listing on the first page of Google search, Danny Sullivan, Google’s public search liaison, announced Wednesday. The corresponding regular listing may or may not appear as the first result on the second search results page.
Why we care
For featured snippet owners, this change means that your URL will only appear once on the first page of search results, instead of twice.
For those that don’t own the featured snippet, it means that your competitor that does own it will no longer appear twice.
Because it is now possible to earn a featured snippet while appearing on the second page of results, SEOs should keep an eye on their traffic and tracking tools to see how they adjust.
More on the announcement
- As of January 22, the change has rolled out globally.
- Featured snippets will also be counted amongst the ten organic listings shown.
- The right-sidebar featured snippet variant will begin appearing in the main column and deduplication will apply to those as well, Sullivan tweeted.
About The Author
George Nguyen is an Associate Editor at Third Door Media. His background is in content marketing, journalism, and storytelling.