Types of Snippets

There are a few types that Google and other major search engines use, depending on the type of information a user is searching for. 

Understanding which type of snippet best fits your topic will help you organize your content and give it the best chance of being part of a featured snippet. 

Rich Snippets

Rich snippets are enhanced search results which provide additional information to searchers on the contents of a page. Rich snippets can help you reach the coveted “position zero,” and they answer queries immediately with text, pictures, and videos.

The object types that Google deems eligible for features and enhancements (aka rich snippets) in Google SERPs:

• Article
• Book
• Breadcrumb
• Carousel
• Course
• Critic Review
• Dataset
• Employer Aggregate Rating
• Event
• Fact Check
• FAQ
• How To
• Job Posting
• Local Business
• Logo
• Estimated Salary
• Product
• Q&A
• Recipe
• Review Snippet
• Sitelinks Searchbox
• Speakable
• Subscription and paywalled content
• Video

Examples

How to get rich snippets?

Rich snippets, also referred to as rich results, are powered by structured data. They are the reward for helping search engines like Google understand the purpose of your web pages. Not all structured data leads to a rich snippet, but certain kinds — when implemented correctly — can produce a rich snippet. As a best practice, add structured data, also referred to as schema markup, in the JSON-LD format. Google also supports microdata and RDFa formats.

Which rich snippet format is right for you (examples)?

Ecommerce store: you’ll want product details (price, stock status) and ideally review stars on your snippet. “Product schema” is what you need to implement.

Review site: you’ll want your ratings for each article, and generally the name of the reviewer, to show up on Google. You can use “Review schema” or “Product schema” with a review section.

Content sites: “FAQ schema” and “HowTo schema”

Featured Snippets

A featured snippet is a special block above the organic search results that Google sometimes shows for certain queries, usually questions (i.e., who/what/where/when/why/how). It contains a summary (in the form of a paragraph, a list, a table, or a video), as well as the page title, link to the webpage from which the answer originated, and URL.

Featured snippets (sometimes called answer boxes) live at the top of the search results like Rich Answers and Knowledge Graph results, but they differ in that Google pulls the information from one of the organic listings on the first page of search results, and Google gives that website credit via a link. 

Featured snippets main formats:

• paragraph 
• list
• table snippet

The Paragraph Featured Snippet

This is the quintessential featured snippet. Google extracts text from a page in an attempt to answer the searcher’s question. You’ll see paragraph snippets for questions like: “ How to do/get…”, “Who is…”, “How is…”.

The Numbered List Featured Snippet

These featured snippets often list out steps that explain how to do something, such as recipes.

You’ll see numbered list snippets for: Recipes, DIY tasks, “How to…”, “How do I…”

The Bulleted List Featured Snippet

This is one where content managers and SEO pros can both rejoice. Listicle articles are made for these types of featured snippets, whether you’re ranking items or simply listing them.

You’ll see bulleted list snippets for Best of lists, Ranked items, Unranked items, Feature lists

The Table Featured Snippet

Table snippets are surprisingly popular, making up 29% of all snippets. Google really likes to show off its capabilities with these. It can pull the specific information the user is looking for, and recreate its own table, as in the example below.

This website actually shows a sortable list of the top auto brands, according to 2016 and 2015 sales, % change year over year, and market share in 2016 and 2015.

For the  “2016 car sales,” search Google scrolled to the bottom of the table to pull just what was needed and created its own table listing the aggregate numbers by brand for 2016.

The above example is a sortable, dynamic table. The information Google pulled for the following snippet is a simple, static, non-sortable table.

You’ll see table featured snippets for Lists, Pricing, Rates, Data

Zero Position for Snippet

Zero position is the result that is displayed before the first organic result on Google. It’s represented by a block of elements extracted from a web page, so that the user can directly find the answer to his/her question. Thus, all the information located above the organic blue links correspond to the position zero. 

How to reach the position 0 in SEO?

To have a chance to come out in position zero, certain criteria must be taken into account:

• A long tail query (questions are more likely to appear in position 0).
• Rank on the 1st page on organic results (99% of the time, according to a study carried out by Ahref).
• The page you want to position must have quality content, and the answer to the question asked must be short (40 to 50 words), and, if possible, in the page’s first few lines.