{"id":15613,"date":"2017-05-29T19:17:29","date_gmt":"2017-05-30T03:17:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/?p=15613"},"modified":"2025-12-18T09:07:32","modified_gmt":"2025-12-18T14:07:32","slug":"featured-snippets-study","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ahrefs.com\/blog\/featured-snippets-study\/","title":{"rendered":"Ahrefs\u2019 Study Of 2 Million Featured Snippets: 10 Important Takeaways"},"content":{"rendered":"
It looks like we\u2019re now in the middle of the featured-snippet-geddon that \u201cSEO astrologists\u201d predicted more than 3 years ago<\/a>. <\/div>\n

Google is actively rolling out featured snippets for a wide variety of search queries because they want to serve quicker answers to people.<\/p>\n

And SEO professionals are absolutely excited about this new opportunity because featured snippets give a chance for low-ranking pages to get to the top of search results<\/a> with almost zero effort.<\/p>\n

Last year, Ahrefs jumped on this bandwagon by introducing support for all sorts of \u201cSERP features\u201d in the Site Explorer<\/a> and Keywords Explorer<\/a> tools.<\/p>\n

And today, we have collected enough data to carry out a substantial research of featured snippets and share all our findings with you.<\/p>\n

But first\u2026<\/p>\n

What is a Featured Snippet?<\/h2>\n

A Featured Snippet (otherwise called Answer Box) is a brief answer to a user\u2019s search query, which is displayed on top of Google search results. It is extracted from one of the top-ranking pages for that search query and includes that page\u2019s title and URL.<\/p>\n

It looks like this:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

But that was my own definition. You might also want to know how Google themselves describe it.<\/a><\/p>\n

What makes a featured snippet so enticing?<\/h2>\n

If your page is ranking anywhere in the top10 Google search results, it has a chance to also get the #0 spot - a featured snippet.<\/p>\n

And the best part is that the amount of effort required to get featured is almost zero (that is, if you get lucky).<\/p>\n

I mean, let\u2019s say that you rank #7 for some keyword. Trudging your way to #1 would usually be quite challenging and slow<\/a>. But if there\u2019s a featured snippet opportunity, you can get there almost instantly with just a few small adjustments on your page.<\/p>\n

So let\u2019s see what Ahrefs\u2019 data<\/a> tells us about featured snippets and how to take advantage of this awesome opportunity.<\/p>\n

1. How many search queries have a featured snippet?<\/h2>\n

When we performed this study, we had ~112 million keywords in our US database, almost ~14 million of which had featured snippets in their SERP.<\/p>\n

In other words, according to Ahrefs\u2019 data, ~12.29% of search queries have featured snippets in their search results. (Which is quite a lot, if you ask me.)<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Performing a study on 14 million keywords would be rather challenging, so most of the experiments below are based on smaller samples (up to 2 million keywords, depending on the experiment).<\/p>\n

2. Do featured snippets drive more clicks?<\/h2>\n

Featured snippets are styled differently from the rest of the search results. They occupy more real estate, and they clearly catch the eye.<\/p>\n

So they should attract a lot of clicks, right?<\/p>\n

Wrong!<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

When there\u2019s a featured snippet at the #1 position, it only gets ~8.6%<\/strong> of clicks (on average), while the page that ranks right below it will get ~19.6%<\/strong> of clicks (on average).<\/p>\n

How does it compare to a regular #1 ranking page with no featured snippet above it? That page will get ~26%<\/strong> of all clicks.<\/p>\n

In other words, it looks like the featured snippet is stealing clicks from the #1 ranking result.<\/p>\n

Sidenote.<\/div> Just in case you want to know a bit more about the details of the above experiment, we only selected search queries that didn\u2019t have any paid ads, and we excluded all branded search queries where the #1 ranking result had sitelinks<\/a>. Sample size: 100k keywords with search volume of at least 100 searches per month.<\/div>\n

But, as you may already know<\/a>, not all searches result in clicks on the search results:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

So we also decided to study the \u201cClicks-to-Searches\u201d ratio for keywords that had a featured snippet in the search results VS those that didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

And here\u2019s what we\u2019ve got:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

It looks like featured snippets do reduce the overall number of clicks. Which is no surprise, actually, since the goal of these featured snippets is to give the searcher an instant answer to their question so they wouldn\u2019t have to click.<\/p>\n

Sidenote.<\/div> Please treat the results of the above experiments with a grain of salt because featured snippets aren\u2019t the single contributing factor to both CTR and Clicks\/Volume ratio of a search query. And the numbers vastly vary from keyword to keyword, while we\u2019re giving you averages across a large sample. But the general takeaways do seem to make a lot of sense nonetheless.<\/div>\n

3. What are the most common ranking positions of featured snippets?<\/h2>\n

In the above experiment, we only looked at the search queries where the featured snippet was ranking at the very top of the search results.<\/p>\n

But how often does this occur?<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

It looks like only 30.9%<\/strong> of featured snippets rank at the very top. And still, the vast majority of them rank in the top5 quite consistently.<\/p>\n

4. Is top10 ranking required to get \u201cfeatured\u201d?<\/h2>\n

According to our data, it is 99.58%<\/strong> positive that Google only features pages that already rank in the top10.<\/p>\n

But now you\u2019re probably wondering what\u2019s up with these 0.42%<\/strong> \u201coutlier\u201d pages? The answer is simple: they are taken from some other SERP feature, like an Answer Box.<\/p>\n

So it appears there\u2019s no way to rank in a featured snippet if you don\u2019t already rank anywhere on the front page of Google.<\/p>\n

5. Do backlink signals help you get a featured snippet?<\/h2>\n

For each individual search query, we compared the backlink metrics of a \u201cfeatured\u201d page vs. median value among the rest of the pages in the top10 organic results.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s what we\u2019ve got:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

In the vast majority of cases, the backlink metrics of a \u201cfeatured\u201d URL seem to be on par with the rest of the pages in SERP. So Google doesn\u2019t seem to be featuring \u201cthe strongest\u201d page in the top10.<\/p>\n

Sidenote.<\/div> DR & UR<\/a> only measure the overall quality and quantity of incoming backlinks. We didn\u2019t study the anchor texts of these backlinks, or surrounding text, or topical relevance of the linking pages. So we can\u2019t advise you to discount all backlink factors at once. <\/div>\n

6. How many featured snippets can a single page rank for?<\/h2>\n

The top-performing page in our database owns 4,658<\/strong> featured snippets!<\/p>\n

It\u2019s this one:<\/p>\n

https:\/\/authoritynutrition.com\/how-to-lose-weight-as-fast-as-possible\/<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You can browse the search queries where this page is featured using Ahrefs\u2019 Site Explorer<\/a> tool.<\/p>\n

Just go to the \u201cOrganic keywords\u201d report and use the \u201cFeatures\u201d filter:<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

And here are the top10 pages by the amount of featured snippets they rank for:<\/p>\n

    \n
  1. (4658) https:\/\/authoritynutrition.com\/how-to-lose-weight-as-fast-as-possible\/<\/li>\n
  2. (3159) http:\/\/www.healthline.com\/health\/rashes<\/li>\n
  3. (3130) http:\/\/www.webmd.com\/pain-management\/guide\/whats-causing-my-chest-pain<\/li>\n
  4. (3055) https:\/\/authoritynutrition.com\/6-proven-ways-to-lose-belly-fat\/<\/li>\n
  5. (2993) https:\/\/authoritynutrition.com\/12-weight-loss-pills-reviewed\/<\/li>\n
  6. (2918) http:\/\/www.savethestudent.org\/make-money\/10-quick-cash-injections.html<\/li>\n
  7. (2354) https:\/\/www.onlinevideoconverter.com\/mp3-converter<\/li>\n
  8. (2289) https:\/\/torrentfreak.com\/top-10-most-popular-torrent-sites-of-2016-160102\/<\/li>\n
  9. (2167) http:\/\/www.healthline.com\/health\/raised-skin-bump<\/li>\n
  10. (2150) https:\/\/www.rush.edu\/health-wellness\/quick-guides\/what-is-a-healthy-weight<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n

    We already know that a single page can rank in the top10 for thousands of relevant keywords (see our previous study<\/a>). But it turns out that a single page can also \u201cbe featured\u201d for thousands of search queries.<\/p>\n

    7. Which search queries trigger featured snippets?<\/h2>\n

    Let\u2019s take a closer look at the 2 million search queries with featured snippets that we have randomly selected for this study.<\/p>\n

    Here\u2019s their distribution by monthly search volume:<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    Somehow, I always thought Google only cares to display a featured snippet if the keyword is fairly popular. But it turns out the majority of featured snippets are triggered by long-tail keywords<\/a>.<\/p>\n

    This data actually supports the \u201ccreate great content<\/a>\u201d mantra.<\/p>\n

    I mean, there\u2019s almost no way you could purposefully target millions of featured snippets for millions of long-tail keywords.<\/p>\n

    But if you stick to writing detailed in-depth articles that fill all possible blank spots that people might have, you\u2019re increasing your chances to rank for a bunch of \u201clong-tail featured snippets.\u201d<\/p>\n

    8. Which words trigger featured snippets?<\/h2>\n

    Here are the top30 most frequently met words among the search queries that trigger featured snippets (stop words<\/a> excluded):<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    A.J. Ghergich<\/a> has done some great research<\/a>, studying the relations between types of search queries<\/a> (questions, prepositions, comparisons) and formats of featured snippets (paragraph, table, list).<\/p>\n

    Immediately after reading it, I wanted to know the \u201cpopularity\u201d of each group of search queries:<\/p>\n

    <\/p>\n

    To my sincere surprise, the vast majority of keywords that trigger featured snippets didn\u2019t belong to any of the three aforementioned groups.<\/p>\n

    Here are a few examples of keywords from the group \u201cOther\u201d:<\/p>\n