By Mehdi HassanWhat is a featured snippet?
A featured snippet is a search result format where Google lifts a passage from a page and shows it in a box above, or near the top of, the regular results. The box names the source and links to it, so the searcher can read the answer on Google or click for more.
The nickname "position zero" comes from where it sits: above the first organic listing. Snippets predate AI Overviews by years, and on many queries today an AI Overview appears instead of, or alongside, a snippet. Both terms are defined side by side in our SEO and AEO glossary.
What are the types of featured snippets?
There are four common types of featured snippets, and the type follows the shape of the question being asked.
Type | Triggered by | What Google pulls |
|---|---|---|
Paragraph | "What is", "why", "who" questions | A short definition or explanation |
List | "How to", "steps", "best" queries | An ordered or bulleted list, or H2s it turns into one |
Table | Comparisons, prices, specs | Rows from an HTML table |
Video | Visual how-to queries | A YouTube clip, often with a timestamp |
Tables are underused by most B2B sites, which is an opening. Our guide to comparison tables for featured snippets shows how to build ones Google can read.
What does the 40 to 60 word snippet pattern look like?
The pattern is a question as the heading, followed immediately by a 40 to 60 word answer that names the subject in its first sentence and makes sense quoted alone. Detail, examples and caveats come after. We write every article on this blog this way, including this one.
Real example: the short answer on our landing page guide
Our article on what a landing page is opens with this answer: "A landing page is a single web page built for one audience and one action, such as starting a trial, booking a demo or joining a waitlist." It continues for one more sentence contrasting it with a homepage, and the whole answer stays inside the 40 to 60 word range.
Notice what it does. It repeats the subject ("A landing page is"), gives a definition rather than a story, adds concrete examples, and draws one contrast. Nothing in it depends on the paragraph before. That's what makes a passage easy to lift into a snippet or an AI answer. We can't promise Google uses it for any given query; the structure only gives it a fair chance.
How do you get a featured snippet?
You get a featured snippet by ranking on page one for a question and having the clearest, best-shaped answer to it on that page. You can't mark a passage for selection; Google decides.
- Find queries where a snippet already shows and your page ranks in the top ten. These are your realistic targets.
- Match the snippet type. If Google shows a list, answer with a list. If it shows a table, build an HTML table.
- Put the answer under a question heading, in 40 to 60 words for paragraphs.
- Use plain HTML. Real headings, lists and tables, not images of text or content loaded later by scripts.
- Add a visible FAQ for related questions. See FAQ sections that get cited.
If you're not ranking at all yet, a snippet isn't the first problem to solve. An audit will tell you what's holding pages back; our comparison of free vs paid SEO audits explains what each one catches.
How does a featured snippet relate to AI Overviews?
A featured snippet and an AI Overview both answer on the results page, so both contribute to zero-click search. The difference is that a snippet quotes one page word for word, while an AI Overview writes a new answer from several pages. The good news is that the same answer-first writing serves both, plus AI assistants, which is one reason we argue in is SEO dead that the fundamentals still pay.
