Featured Snippets: A Shortcut to the Top of Google

Featured snippets are highlighted results that sit above the main organic results in a place known as “position zero.”

Google displays featured snippets when this format will be helpful for people to find the answer to their search query.

So, what types of featured snippets are there—and how can you find them, steal them, and track them?

Here’s why:

There are four types of featured snippets that appear in Google’s search results.

Here’s what they look like.

Paragraph snippets provide a brief definition or answer for a topic. They’re one of the most commonly used snippets that you’ll see on Google. They’ve also started highlighting important content in blue to show the key point of the snippet.

Here’s an example of a paragraph snippet that Ahrefs ranks for.

List snippets show as ordered or unordered lists—numbered or bulleted lists. They are most common for step-by-step content that shows you how to do something.

Here’s what an ordered list snippet looks like:

And here’s an example of an unordered list snippet:

Table snippets are less common than the previous snippets, but you’ll see them show up for certain topics where a table is the best way to present the data.

Here’s an example of a table snippet we rank for, for our Top Google Searches article.

Video snippets take a screenshot of your video and put it directly in the search results. In the example below, our link building for beginners tutorial has been selected as the video snippet. 

I worked out that ~37% of my Ahrefs articles have gained featured snippets in the last year. 

So how did I do it?

A big part of this is writing content that your visitors like and engage with, but you can also optimize to increase the likelihood of getting snippets (even if you aren't Ahrefs.)

Here’s a breakdown of the process I use to get featured snippets and monitor their performance.

You can use Ahrefs to find keywords with prominent snippets and also to spy on which snippets your competitors rank for.

Here’s a super simple way to find featured snippets on your website using Site Explorer:

You’ll get a list of keywords that trigger a Featured snippet result for the top spot of the website you entered. 

If you find any featured snippet URLs that are important for your business, copy the URLs into a list. (We’ll use them later on, to track in Portfolios.)

If you want to find featured snippets you can take from competitors, update the Position filter to 2-5 to find the top featured snippet opportunities. This will highlight keywords that you could possibly win from competitors.

Rather than attempting to steal some of the most competitive snippets straight away, I’ve found it’s often easier to start by winning lower Keyword difficulty (KD) keywords and then working your way up. For this reason, I’m going to add an additional filter that sets the KD from 1-10.

If we click on “how to write a blog post outline,” we can take a look at the SERP.

We can see that the estimated organic Traffic for the first result is almost five times that of the third result. 

If we check the result on Google, we can see it’s a paragraph snippet.

Another check I like to do is to see what part of the content Google is scraping. You will need to go to the page to find this out.

In this example, I can see it’s pulling the ordered list at the top of the page. I’ve included the split view so you can see it’s identical to the code on the page.

With a bit of work updating our blog post outline article, this is the type of featured snippet that we may be able to take from our competitor—by providing our own angle on this topic. 

Once you’ve found a snippet you think you could take, it’s time to steal it.

Although there’s no guarantee of winning a snippet, you can make tweaks to your content to increase the likelihood of winning them.

For instance, here are some ways you can make your article as accessible as possible for both Google and your readers.

As your competitor already owns the snippet, it’s also worth analyzing their content to understand why Google chose this content as its featured snippet.

It’s worth asking yourself:

After you’ve improved your content using these tips, you should start winning a few featured snippets for your website.

Once you’ve won a snippet or two, it’s worth tracking them to understand how much organic traffic they’re driving. But what’s the best way to do this?

There are two ways to keep track of your featured snippets in Ahrefs:

Here’s an example of a Portfolio I created to track featured snippets on Ahrefs’ Blog.

Here’s how you can create one as well:

Portfolios enable you to track 100-1000 URLs from 10 different domains in a group – depending on your plan. This is usually more than enough for most websites to track their featured snippets’ performance.

But, if you want to track your complete website – you’ll need Rank Tracker.

It’s easy to add keywords directly from Keywords Explorer.

To do this:

Once you’ve added all the keywords that you want to track, head over to Rank Tracker:

One of the advantages of using Rank Tracker is that you get a summary of SERP features you’ve won. 

If we click on SERP features, we get more details about our featured snippets compared to the SERP.

If you’re looking for a total website solution, tools like Rank Tracker are one of the most comprehensive ways to track all your featured snippets and other SERP features.

Optimizing for featured snippets focuses on giving a brief but valuable answer to the search query in the most suitable format Google and searchers’ expect. Understanding the underlying search intent of the user is key—you have to focus on writing for users.

Tools like Ahrefs help you reverse engineer every single featured snippet on Google so you can learn exactly what works for keywords in your niche by spying on your competitors.

Got questions? Ping me on X (formerly known as Twitter)