As you know, Google said they would move the right hand side featured snippets from the right side to the center/top, but until then, Google would stop deduplicating those snippets. According to both RankRanger and Moz, Google has removed a nice chunk of those, about 60% according to these tool providers. But no, they have not yet moved to the center, they are just gone.
Here is a chart Mordy from RankRanger shared on Twitter, he said "We're seeing a 60% drop-off in Explore Panels (aka right-hand side Featured Snippets)!" He added "I haven't seen any move to the 'center'. When I do see them they are still to the right. From what I can see a good chunk of product 'related' (sometimes loosely) KWs have lost the feature."
Dr. Pete from Moz added on Twitter "We saw a similar drop on 2/15, although those RHS panels didn't move to the left, for the most part, they just went away (for now). Keep in mind that RHS panels (at least in our data set) were around 30% of Featured Snippets -- the vast majority are still left-hand boxes." "On Feb 14, 27.5% of Featured Snippets in MozCast were RHS panels. This morning (Feb 24), it's down to 10.9%," he added. I do not believe Mozcast shows a graph for right side panels.
Personally, I have been seeing tons of right hand side panels in my daily test searches, similar to Glenn:
BTW, it's also worth noting that right-side featured snippets still haven't moved to position 1 on the left side of the SERP yet. They aren't being dedupded (so they still show up on the left in the core results), but the FS is supposed to move to the left "soonish". :) pic.twitter.com/9tZ6MFCwF1
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) February 24, 2020
But that is me.
I guess Google is beginning the process of removing the right side featured snippets and will hopefully move them to the center soon? Or maybe they are doing away with them completely? I really do not know.
Forum discussion at Twitter.
