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Home / Industry News / Featured Snippets Drop Drastically in SERPS – Breaking News

Featured Snippets Drop Drastically in SERPS – Breaking News

March 4, 2021 By John E Lincoln

Looks like featured snippets could be on the way out.

According to a new report by Moz, the number of search engine results pages (SERPs) with featured snippets dropped dramatically in February.

Is this the beginning of a trend?

In this article, I’ll go over what we know about featured snippets falling away.

Featured Snippets

Featured Snippets Drop Drastically in SERPS

Featured Snippets Experience First Noticeable Drop in Years

MozCast measured a whopping 40% day-over-day decrease in featured snippets appearances on February 19.

That decline never recovered. This doesn’t appear to be a blip on the radar.

So to answer the question I posed at the beginning of this article: yes, this could very well be the beginning of a trend.

Moz claims that this is the lowest prevalence rate of featured snippets since they began recording data in 2015.

Oh, by the way: Moz isn’t alone. Other search trackers clocked the same precipitous downfall of featured snippets as well.

In other words, it’s not a bug in Moz’s software that’s causing the readout.

And yes, the drop appears on both desktop and mobile platforms. However, mobile dropped only 9% day-over-day on February 19.

But that was after a 12% drop on February 10.

Industries Hit Hardest

Which industries got hit the hardest with the change in featured snippet appearances? It looks like the YMYL categories (Your Money, Your Life) got pounded. YMYL categories are those that could potentially greatly impact someone’s future in terms of their happiness, health, financial stability, or even their safety.

Here’s a breakdown of the change in featured snippet appearances as of Feb. 19:

  • Health: -68%
  • Finance: -60%
  • Hobbies and Leisure: -42%
  • Jobs and Education: -39%
  • Family and Community: -36%
  • Beauty and Personal Care: -34%
  • Internet and Telecom: -32%
  • Computers and Electronics: -32%
  • Law and Government: -32%
  • Home and Garden: -31%
  • Real Estate: -31%
  • Dining and Nightlife: -28%
  • Apparel: -27%
  • Travel and Tourism: -25%
  • Vehicles: -25%
  • Retailers and Merchandise: -19%
  • Arts and Entertainment: -18%
  • Sports and Fitness: -16%
  • Food and Groceries: -14%
  • Occasion and Gifts: -4%

Additionally, some of the most competitive healthcare terms lost a lot of ground in terms of featured snippets. Here are some of the keywords that took a beating:

  • Diabetes
  • Lupus
  • Autism
  • Fibromyalgia
  • Acne

And in the finance sector:

  • Pension
  • Risk management
  • Mutual funds
  • Roth IRA
  • Investment

Keep in mind, though: those very competitive terms often display a Knowledge Panel on the right sidebar (at least on desktop). Google probably thought a featured snippet in addition to that KP was overkill.

Also, some featured snippets just showed the definition of search terms.

For example, when people searched for “mutual fund,” they’d often see a definition of the financial instrument in Rank 0.

But… that’s probably not why people were searching for the phrase “mutual fund.” They were likely looking for some advice about investing in quality funds or information about how to buy mutual funds.

So it makes sense that Google bounced the featured snippet in that case.

Another thing to ponder: single-word queries got destroyed in this update (assuming it’s an update). The number of featured snippets appearing for one-word terms dropped by 73%.

Meanwhile, two-word queries dropped by just 19%. Three-to-nine word queries dropped by five or six percent.

Ramifications for SEO

Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth.

People would often get all the info they needed from your optimized image and not bother to click the link to the site.

In other words, your click-through rate might have dropped if your content showed up a lot at the Rank 0 position.

But if Google phases it out, then your other optimized content will show up on Page 1. And that content requires users to click a link if they want to get the answers they’re searching for.

And yes, I know, you probably did a lot of work to optimize for Rank 0. But the nature of SEO is that all the best-practices of today will be obsolete tomorrow.

Wrapping It Up

Keep an eye on this one. It might affect your overall content marketing strategy.

If we see the ratings drop even further, it might be best to put additional emphasis on landing a Rank 1 position rather than a Rank 0.

And you’ll likely get more visitors that way.

About John E Lincoln

John Lincoln (MBA) is CEO of Ignite Visibility (a 2017, 2018, 2019 and 2020 Inc. 5000 company) a highly sought-after digital marketing strategist, industry speaker and author of two books, "The Forecaster Method" and "Digital Influencer." Over the course of his career, Lincoln has worked with over 1,000 online businesses ranging from small startups to amazing clients such as Office Depot, Tony Robbins, Morgan Stanley, Fox, USA Today, COX and The Knot World Wide. John Lincoln is the editor of the Ignite Visibility blog. While he is a contributor, he does not write all of the articles and in many cases he is supported to ensure timely content.

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John Lincoln is CEO of Ignite Visibility, one of the top digital marketing agencies in the nation and a 6x Inc. 5,000 company. Lincoln is consistently named one of the top marketing experts in the industry. He has been recipient of the Search Engine Land "Search Marketer of the Year" award, named the #1 SEO consultant in the USA by Clutch.co, most admired CEO and 40 under 40. Lincoln has written two books (The Forecaster Method and Digital Influencer) and made two movies (SEO: The Movie and Social Media Marketing: The Movie) on digital marketing. He is a digital marketing strategy adviser to some of the biggest names in business. John Lincoln is the editor of the Ignite Visibility blog. While he is a major contributor, he does not write all of the articles.

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