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Google has been expanding their featured snippets over the past year or so, not just in the US but also in the EU. In a video hangout with Google's John Mueller, John hinted that Google probably will be expanding these featured snippets even more so - probably in other languages.
John didn't come out and say it, but by the way John said what he said, and if you want me to read between the lines - which is what I do, I wouldn't be surprised to see featured snippets in non-English languages expand. Potentially even see translated featured snippets in some cases.
At the 4:55 minute mark into yesterday's hangout, John was asked:
Can we expect some rapid increase in the search results, we see them more and more but mainly for definition type queries. In the US it's quite common to also see them for other types of queries.
John responded:
I don't have anything to announce. So I can't promise that will show more of these. I do know it's something that the team is working on to kind of spread more awareness around the featured snippet and finding ways to bring them into the search results so that they provide value is sometimes not not quite that easy especially when you don't understand the language fully yourself. You have to rely on a lot of people's help to get them there. So I would assume we'll see more but I don't have any promises that I can make there.
Here is the video embed:
Forum discussion at YouTube.
