For a couple years now, Google Search has been displaying “featured snippets” above results. Featured snippets are meant to provide a user with information from the top search result so they can quickly get the answer to their question and assess the credibility of the source before navigating to the site. Google’s newest form of search result snippets take the form of Q&A, FAQ and How To — here is a brief overview of each before they officially debut.
Q&A
Q&A snippets will be shown when Google detects that a reputable site has questions and answers in its content. After the preview of the answer, Google will provide a “read more” link to drive users to the source.
FAQ
FAQs will be presented as questions with expandable answers, very similar to how common questions are displayed currently in search results.
How To
How Tos will be a condensed set of instructions, similar to how recipes are currently displayed, with a “read more” link to the website.
Prepare Your Website
In order to best position yourself to be featured in these snippets and visible to your customers, you can update your website’s code to used structured data — schema — that will help Google easily understand the purpose and content of your website. While Google hasn’t formalized these features, a standardized schema for these data types exists and is documented on schema.org. To increase the likelihood of content on your site being served as a featured snippet, you could start structuring the data on your site now.
If you have any questions about how his affects your business or have questions about how schema works, don’t hesitate to give us a call — our digital marketing experts would be happy to help you.
About Mira Brody
Mira Brody is an editor, writer, and marketing expert with 12+ years of experience. She has worked as a local news reporter, a writer/editor, and as a leader in large-scale branding strategy. Mira worked at JTech as the staff writer and editor for internal and client projects from March 2015 to December 2019.
