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Google seems to be showing fewer featured snippets in the search results since February 19, 2021. All three tools that I am aware that track featured snippets all showed a significant decline in the percentage of search results with featured snippets.
Although, as of this morning, RankRanger is showing a bit of a bounce back - making me wonder if this was some sort of Google bug?
Mozcast is showing a decline 7.5% of search results having featured snippets to 4.5% of search results having featured snippets:
RankRanger is showing a decline 9.5% of search results having featured snippets to about 8.5% of search results having featured snippets:
SEMRush is showing a decline 6.9% of search results having featured snippets to 5.1% of search results having featured snippets:
SEOClarity also picked up on the change:
Across our huge @seoClarity database we saw Featured Snippets in SERPs drop on both the 13th and 19th of this month. Also seeing decline in Knowledge Graph and Images (around 25% for each of those!) pic.twitter.com/gzS5Guv1ow
— Mark Traphagen ✊🏾🏳️🌈 (@marktraphagen) February 24, 2021
This would have happened after the unconfirmed February 17th update.
Mordy who knows this data pretty well, since he worked at RankRanger for years, said:
That would seem to imply the drop-off is for higher search volume kinda queries since the RR data set and Moz differ in that regard.
— Mordy Oberstein (@MordyOberstein) February 24, 2021
This is essentially correct. Apples-and-oranges in some ways, but I'll verify against STAT, which is a larger set.
— Dr. Pete Meyers (@dr_pete) February 24, 2021
Glenn Gabe even looked at specific sites and confirmed he is seeing it:
Checking some powerful sites with many featured snippets shows the visibility drop for that domain (when isolating queries that yielded featured snippets). Manually checking the queries, a number of the featured snippets aren't there anymore. Very interesting... pic.twitter.com/RF5JEqjmyb
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) February 24, 2021
Also interesting to see some large sites see no impact at all. The ones I checked that did see a big impact were reference sites, health & medical, & finance. Very interesting... Here is a powerhouse that has many featured snippets. Their visibility trending went up during this. pic.twitter.com/NiY8Oz8ojE
— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) February 24, 2021
Have you all noticed less featured snippets in your spaces?
Update: RankRanger updated this morning and is now showing a bit of a bounce back, I wonder if this was a Google bug?
Forum discussion at Twitter.
