How Google Featured Snippets help improve your search experience?
Tags: Featured, Google, SEO, Search, Customer Service

Most days you find what you are searching for on Google, though it might take a little digging. Some days you don’t, no matter how long you look. It could be the review of a book you’re planning to buy, a recipe for the favourite dish of your loved one or even a product for your business or personal use. Isn’t it always better and much easier when the bit of information you are looking for is presented to you on the very top, even before the “natural search results” of Google? Google has a very useful feature called Featured Snippet and it helps users receive the information they’re looking for quickly and with the least effort. It is not just useful for the user who is looking for the information but also for the ones providing it.

What is a Featured Snippet?

Google Featured Snippet

Featured Snippet, which is also known as an Answer Box, is a very quick, brief and precise answer to a search query and is displayed on top of the Google search engine results page (SERP). This information is gathered from the page with the highest relevance to the search query and is displayed along with the page’s title and URL. According to this article, Google only uses those pages that come in the Top 10 ranking to display in the Featured Snippets. Some of the most commonly used Featured Snippets are Paragraph, List, Table, etc.

How is it useful?

Featured Snippets provide the opportunity to get more clicks simply through the search results, without considering the Google ranking. Therefore, everyone wants their content to be on the top or at least in the top 10 list of links. According to a research by HubSpot, content with a featured snippet gets double the amount of clicks. Additionally, it was noted that even in the #1 position of the search results, which is right below the Featured Snippet, HubSpot had a boost in their click-through rate (CTR), which increased by over 114%.

Graph showing how useful Google Featured Snippets are to improve the Click Through Rate (CTR)(https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/how-to-featured-snippet-box)

The growth of Featured Results over the years is remarkable. According to Search Engine Land, based on a study in 2017, 30% of 1.4 million queries had Google search results with Featured Results. They noted that featured snippets get 8% of the overall clicks. So getting your page in the Featured Snippet for a search query means a huge boost to your business.

How to optimize your page for Featured Snippet?

For a definition or a simple question, the aim is to provide Google a brief answer of 40–60 words, which they can use to display in the Featured Snippet. Additionally, a heading or a subheading with the same or similar question would be an added advantage. For a list, maintain consistency in the formatting and avoid any typos or errors, especially in formatting.

According to an article in moz.com, a neatly organized page with paragraph and heading tags, containing factual information and organized questions have a higher chance of being displayed in the Featured Snippet. It is also better if one article could answer multiple similar questions. The HubSpot article elaborates on the ways to get a Featured Snippet. The content to be displayed should be in a <p> tag directly beneath the header tags (h2, h3, h4, etc) and should contain keywords and images if available. It is always best to keep the word count within the range 54–58. The other paragraphs could have a more detailed explanation about the topic. To summarize, it is always best to have well-formatted and organized pages with high-quality content and images that answers multiple questions in detail. This ensures that your page and your content has higher relevance and therefore has a higher chance of being picked for the Top 10 list and Featured Snippet.

Bar graph showing the number of featured snippets with the ideal word count (https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/how-to-featured-snippet-box)

SearchAI Answers

What if you could add a similar feature to your page? SearchAI Answers offered by SearchBlox works in a similar way and by using it new or existing customers can quickly and easily troubleshoot their problems and find the right answers to their questions. This makes the search experience better, faster and more efficient. It can easily be integrated into your existing search setup through a search box or chat allowing users to receive the right content or information in a quick and easy way.

SearchAI Answers in search results

SearchAI Answers ensures that the customer does not have to wait for a response or wait in a call with a customer service employee, thus reducing customer service costs. This also ensures that the customers get the right answer to their question immediately which increases the first contact resolution. The customers’ experience with SearchAI is better and more efficient as it responds to natural language questions wherever they’re asked, either in search, via chat or voice. This saves time and effort as it does not require manual tagging, specific domain taxonomy or knowledge graphs.

To know more about SearchAI Answers and try it out for yourself, click here. To know more about SearchBlox, click here. You can reach out to us via email or call us on +1(866) 933–3626.