Featured Snippets Drop
On February 19, MozCast measured a remarkable drop (40% day-over-day) in SERPs with Featured Bits, with no instant indications of recovery. Here's a two-week view (February 10-23):.
Are we losing our minds?
After the year we have actually all had, it's always great to examine our sanity. In this case, other information sets showed a drop on the exact same date, however the intensity of the drop varied drastically. So, I checked our STAT data throughout desktop questions (en-US just)-- over 2 million daily SERPs-- and saw the following:.
While mobile SERPs in STAT showed higher general prevalence, the pattern was extremely similar, with a 9% day-over-day-drop on February 19 and a total drop of about 12% given that February 10. Note that, while there is substantial overlap, the desktop and mobile data sets may consist of different search expressions. While the desktop information set is presently about 2.2 M everyday SERPs, mobile is closer to 1.7 M.
Note that the MozCast 10K keywords are manipulated (intentionally) toward much shorter, more competitive phrases, whereas STAT consists of many more "long-tail" expressions. This describes the general greater prevalence in STAT, as longer phrases tend to consist of questions and other natural-language queries that are most likely to drive Featured Snippets.
Why the huge difference?
What's driving the 40% drop in MozCast and, most likely, more competitive terms? While some modifications impact industry categories similarly, the Featured Snippet loss showed a significant variety of effect:.
Competitive health care terms lost more than two-thirds of their Featured Snippets. It turns out that a number of these terms had other prominent features, such as Medical Understanding Panels. Here are some high-volume terms that lost Included Bits in the Health category:.
lupus.
autism.fibromyalgia.
acne.While Financing had a much lower initial prevalence of Included Bits, Financing SERPs also saw enormous losses on February 19. Some high-volume examples include:.
pension.
danger management.shared funds.
roth ira.investment.
Like the Health category, these terms have an Understanding Panel in the right-hand column on desktop, with some basic information (mostly from Wikipedia/Wikidata). Once again, these are competitive "head" terms, where Google was displaying several SERP features prior to February 19.
What about passage indexing?
Could this be tied to the "passage indexing" update that presented around February 10? While there's a lot we still do not understand about the impact of that update, and while that update affected rankings and highly likely impacted organic snippets of all types, there's no reason to think that upgrade would affect whether or not a Featured Snippet is shown for any provided inquiry. While the timelines overlap a little, these occasions are most likely separate.
Is the bit sky falling?
While the 40% drop in Featured Snippets in MozCast seems genuine, the effect was mainly on much shorter, more competitive terms and particular industry categories. For those in YMYL categories, it definitely makes good sense to examine the effect on your rankings and search traffic.
Think about, too, that a few of these Included Snippets might just have actually been redundant. Prior to February 19, somebody searching for "shared fund" may have seen this Included Bit:.
Google is assuming a "What is/are ...?" concern here, however "mutual fund" is an extremely ambiguous search that could have multiple intents. At the exact same time, Google was already revealing a Knowledge Graph entity in the right-hand column (on desktop), probably from trusted sources:.
Why display both, particularly if Google has issues about quality in a classification where they're extremely conscious quality problems? At the exact same time, while it may sting a bit to lose these Featured Snippets, consider whether they were actually delivering. While this term may be fantastic for vanity, how frequently are individuals at the very start of a search journey-- who may not even understand what a shared fund is-- going to convert into a customer? In most cases, they might be leaping straight to the Understanding Panel and not even taking the Included Snippet into account.
For Moz Pro clients, bear in mind that you can easily track Featured Snippets from the "SERP Features" page (under "Rankings" in the left-hand nav) and filter for keywords with Featured Snippets. You'll get a report something like this-- try to find the scissors icon to see where Included Snippets are appearing and whether you (blue) or gold coast seo specialists a competitor (red) are catching them:.
Whatever the impact, something remains real-- Google giveth and Google taketh away. Unlike losing a ranking or losing a Featured Snippet to a rival, there's extremely little you can do to reverse this sort of sweeping modification. For sites in heavily-impacted verticals, we can only keep track of the scenario and try to examine our brand-new reality.
Update: Come by word-count.
I realized that we could look at word-count in the STAT data to check the theory that much shorter search questions (which are normally both more competitive and more ambiguous) were struck harder by this update. Here's the breakdown of STAT's 2M desktop (en-US) keywords ...There's not much subtlety here-- 1-word queries were clobbered in this upgrade, 2-word inquiries dropped considerably higher than the STAT average, and 3+- word queries were struck much less. Why these inquiries were hit isn't as clear, however the effect on very short questions is clear.