AI SEO Glossary
What is Featured Snippet?
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TL;DR - A featured snippet is the extracted answer box Google displays at the top of the results page - often called position zero - quoting a passage, list, or table pulled directly from a ranking page, with a link to its source. Snippets are won, not submitted: Google selects the page whose formatting most cleanly answers the query, typically a 40–60 word definition, a step list, or a comparison table placed near a matching heading. Snippet-shaped content has a second life in the AI era: the same crisp, extractable answers are what LLM retrieval prefers to quote.
Featured snippets in practice
The answer box above the first result
A featured snippet is the short answer Google shows at the top of the results. Pages that answer the question in a tidy paragraph, list or table right under a matching heading are the ones it picks.
- ›Question headings with a direct answer below
- ›Steps written as clear numbered lists
- ›Answers short enough to quote whole
Definition & scope
The optimization pattern is answer-first writing: pose the question as a heading, answer it completely in the first sentence or two, then elaborate. Pages structured this way win snippets, People Also Ask slots, and AI citations with the same asset.
Snippets cannibalize some clicks (the zero-click effect) but carry outsized authority - for definitional and how-to queries in a category, owning the snippet is owning the conversation's opening line.
Related terms
- Zero-Click Search - the behavior snippets drive.
- People Also Ask - the sibling Q&A surface.
- Google AI Overviews - the AI successor to the snippet block.
Related services
- AEO Services - snippet-grade answer structure across the site.