Jan 2020 Google Featured Snippet Update.Google has confirmed that webpages in a featured snippet position will no longer be repeated in regular Page 1 organic listings.
This is a brand new global change.
The change will affect 100% of all search listings worldwide. This means a reduction in multiple listings on Google Page 1 and if you’ve a featured snippet listing your organic listing will be on Google Page 2 or below.
For example, if I search “How to Brush your Teeth”, The result is the following:
1) You need to understand that if a result appears in the answer box, this is now 1 of the 10 organic results on Google.
2) If the answer box is answering the patient/users question on Google, Google has responded to the patient’s question on their own website, and you’ve not got the click-through or the traffic. Effectively Google is stealing your traffic with your content. I repeat Google is stealing your traffic with your content!
3) You will most likely see a decrease in Organic Traffic via Google Analytics if you have a listing in the featured snippet. Give your SEO Manager a break about this.
4) Most likely, your blog articles or pages with FAQ traffic will be affected.
Now a natural question to ask is; will this affect my organic leads? It’s too early to say, and I suspect unlikely because the searcher had an “informational query” not a “transactional query” – so Google isn’t really the enemy 🙂
What do I do?
Nothing other than bear this mind with future Google Analytic reports.
The good news is, if you have a featured position, you now have Google position 1.
There is no such thing as Google Position Zero anymore!
Onwards and upwards!
