Definition
A featured snippet is a Google search result shown in a special box above or among the organic results, where the format is reversed: a short excerpt that answers the query appears first, followed by the source page's title and link. SEOs long called it 'position zero'. Featured snippets can also appear inside the 'People also ask' boxes.
Google chooses the excerpt automatically from a page it already ranks; there is no markup that makes a page eligible. Snippets come in a few formats: a paragraph answering a definition or 'why' question, a numbered or bulleted list built from steps or headings, a table pulled from HTML table markup, and video results that jump to a specific moment. Clicking a featured snippet takes the user straight to the quoted passage on the page, according to Google's documentation.
The feature has shrunk sharply since AI Overviews arrived. AI Overviews answer the same kind of informational query, but by synthesizing several sources instead of quoting one. An Ahrefs analysis of 1 million SERPs found featured snippets on 15.41% of results in January 2025 and 5.53% in June 2025, with the decline tracking AI Overview growth almost exactly. Semrush Sensor data for US desktop results showed featured snippets on 0.22% of SERPs in July 2026, against 42.09% for AI Overviews. In a barometer published by Forgr, a fixed sample of 200 French queries went from 70.5% with a featured snippet in June 2026 to 0.5% in August 2026, as AI Overviews rolled out in France. Featured snippets still exist, but for most informational queries the answer box at the top of the page is now generated rather than quoted.
That makes featured snippets more useful as a lesson than as a target. The content traits that won them carry over to AI citation. A direct answer of 40 to 60 words placed right under a heading that states the question, steps in an ordered list, and comparisons in a real HTML table are exactly the self-contained passages that AI Overviews, AI Mode and other AI search systems extract and cite. Passage ranking means any section of a page can qualify, not just the introduction.
The controls also carry over. The nosnippet rule, the data-nosnippet attribute and the max-snippet limit all restrict what Google can quote, and Google applies the same preview controls to its AI features. Blocking snippets to protect clicks therefore also reduces the chance of being cited in AI Overviews. Since August 31, 2026, Search Console also offers a separate control that removes a site from Google's generative AI features while leaving regular results and snippets alone.
If you still track featured snippets, track them next to AI Overview presence for the same queries. A lost snippet is often not a ranking loss at all: the snippet slot was replaced by an AI Overview, and the question becomes whether your page is one of its cited sources. Our guide on checking whether your website is cited in AI Overviews shows how to audit that.
Examples of Featured Snippets
- A home-improvement site held the paragraph snippet for 'how long does grout take to dry' for three years; in 2026 the query shows an AI Overview instead, which still cites the same page as its first source.
- A fitness publisher that won table snippets with an HTML calorie chart finds AI Overviews now quote the same table, so it keeps the table in HTML rather than converting it to an image.
- An SEO team's rank tracker reports 40 lost featured snippets in one quarter; checking the SERPs, they find 37 of those queries now show AI Overviews, and their pages are cited in 22.
- A recipe site adds data-nosnippet to its ingredient lists to protect clicks and later sees its recipes cited less often in AI Overviews, because the same control limits what Google's AI features can quote.
