Google Search Featured Snippets Have Gone Missing (Now Back)

Feb 15, 2024 - 7:55 am 2 by
Filed Under Google

Google Logo Smoke Crack Disappear

It seems that Google has stopped serving featured snippets in its search results this morning. It started around 7 AM ET today, just about an hour ago. I cannot trigger any featured snippets to load.

It might be some sort of rendering or serving bug or maybe Google decided to ditch featured snippets. It can't be intentional? I suspect this is some sort of serving/rendering bug, just like we saw with local results not serving yesterday.

Update: Featured snippets now have retuned about 2 hours after they went missing - I guess it was a bug.

Try surfacing any featured snippet both in Google Search classic and the Search Generative Experience, you can't. I mean, I can't and neither can a ton of people.

I first spotted this via Shameem Adhikarath who posted about this on X and then I asked Glenn Gabe if my eyes were tricking me and he also confirmed and posted on X and wrote, "Heads-up. I'm sure this is a bug, but featured snippets aren't showing at all based on a number of tests I'm running. Here are two examples. Let's see if they return soon, or not."

He also shared some screenshots of before and after:

BEFORE: Before Google Fs1

AFTER: After Google Fs1

BEFORE: Before Google Fs2

AFTER: After Google Fs2

Here is a video cast from Shameem:

Do featured snippets render for you?

Maybe that is why we see a lot of volatility today in the Google search results?

Update: It does seem to work for limited queries:

Update 2: Featured snippets have returned, I guess it was a bug:

Forum discussion at X.

 

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