Google Says There Is No Technical Method To Obtain Featured Snippets In Google Search

Google’s John Mueller was asked for advice on how can he help his client rank in the featured snippets section of the Google Search results. In which, John responded that there is “no technical method for achieving that.”

He said that on Twitter, saying “given that there’s no technical method of achieving that, this seems somewhat futile as a primary goal.” He then said “I’d recommend focusing on other things which are more related to what’s really useful for the site / business.”

While it is true, there is no specific Google advice on how to gain featured snippets, there are ways SEOs nudge Google into having their site rank in the featured snippet box. It is a lot around the structure of the content and how that content is worded. Of course, there is generally (not always) one featured snippet position to fight over, so the chances are hard to rank for those spots these days,

In short, John is saying there is no special meta tag or way to communicate to Google that you want this piece of content to be a featured snippet. Google does have documents on what are featured snippets and how to not show up for featured snippets but that is it.

Here are those tweets:

Given that there’s no technical method of achieving that, this seems somewhat futile as a primary goal. I’d recommend focusing on other things which are more related to what’s really useful for the site / business.

— ? johnmu.xml (personal) ? (@JohnMu) April 13, 2022

Forum discussion at Twitter.