Yesterday, Google also confirmed that in late February, it launched a new algorithm aimed at making sure the featured snippets show the most accurate and timely or fresh answers for the query. Pandu Nayak from Google said "a new algorithm update improves our systems' understanding of what information remains useful over time and what becomes out-of-date more quickly. This is particularly helpful for featured snippets"
It is not clear if that what the unconfirmed chatter around a possible February update was or not, but Danny Sullivan said this update launched in late February:
It went live in late February of this year.
— Danny Sullivan (@dannysullivan) August 1, 2019
Back to this update, as I covered at Search Engine Land yesterday, it focuses on making sure the featured snippets, when it matters, shows fresh content and information. So if you ask Google a question and the answer is better if it is more timely, then Google will want the featured snippet to be more fresh.
For example, showing upcoming holidays that are not for 2018, but now for 2019:
But not the horrible example we showed last month of [best smartphone for product photography] that still shows the iPhone 7 from 2015 when we have iPhone X devices and Pixel 3s and soon Pixel 4s.
To be fair, a search on [best smartphone camera] does show a good featured snippet:
Google posts more examples, like with recall information and updates to shows and events and much more.
Sometimes, freshness counts when it comes to featured snippets. That's why we made a change earlier this year to better identify when we should show fresh content. We share more about that in our blog post today: https://t.co/ADkAFfOHQ4
— Google SearchLiaison (@searchliaison) August 1, 2019
Forum discussion at Twitter.
