How to manage Google’s featured snippets so not to lose clicks

A little more than two months have passed since Google announced a substantial change in the management of featured snippets, which since late last January have stopped being zero results as the deduplication of the results started. Some researches in the United States have tried to shed light on how SERPs and site results have changed, with useful optimization tips to try to improve our performance.

Featured snippets, useful or damaging for sites?

The theme of old zero results is one of the most controversial of the SEO, because opinions on the subject are mixed: on one hand there are those who argue that they steal traffic to sites, on the other hand those who invite to exploit them as an additional opportunity for visibility.

The certainty, that comes from some analyses, is that almost 15 percent of all searches on Google makes a snippet appear in evidence, with ways not always “clear” even for the awarded site. For instance, historically most featured snippets came from sites located in Google’s top3, but after deduplication there is more “variety” and are also taken results that before were simply on the front page.

As we said, the critical aspect of the topic is to understand how much the function can actually give benefits: for many, actually, with the featured snippets Google subtracts traffic to the quality contents of the sites, because when people get the necessary information immediately shown in SERP they no longer need to deepen the theme by clicking on a page.

Different the perception of other experts, who highlight the positive aspects of the feature, considered an opportunity to strengthen the brand and make branding awareness: in the snippets in evidence there are images, descriptions and indication of the url (therefore potentially we can always conquer a click), and its prominent position in SERP helps to make the site more memorable and reliable in the eyes of users.

Regardless of these almost philosophical reasoning, what is important for those who work online is to try however to find new opportunities to achieve the audience and business goals that we have set ourselves, also through the possible optimization of contents so to win clicks.

The study on spot-zero termination

The classic scenario of the function has been changed for about two months now, and you can try to understand what are the consequences of the phenomenon called spot-zero-termination, which affects sites that previously appeared in SERP with both a featured snippet and a classic URL placed regularly. After editing, Google shows only one result (the snippet in evidence) and has moved to other pages (usually in 11th position, second page) the traditional URL.

The digital marketing agency 97th Floor has observed about three thousand high search volume SERPs to understand the extent of the change, which has already