Google featured snippets: the box you cannot mark up, the three places it appears, and the two ways to switch it off

A featured snippet is a box at the top of Google's results that quotes an answer out of a page, with the page's link underneath. Google's own documentation, read on 20 October 2026, describes it as a result "where the format of a regular search result is reversed, showing the descriptive snippet first". You cannot request one, and there is no structured data for it. Google's documentation answers the question directly under the heading "How can I mark my page as a featured snippet?" with two words: "You can't." What you can do is control whether you are eligible at all, and write the one passage that is easy to lift.

Three places the box shows up

Google's help documentation lists three positions for a featured snippet: at the top of the search results, inside the "People also ask" section, and beside the Knowledge Graph panel on the right. It also notes that usually there is one box, and sometimes more than one. That matters when you are trying to work out whether you hold a snippet: a passage of yours quoted inside a People also ask expansion is the same mechanism as the box at the top, and it is easy to miss in a screenshot.

Featured snippet, rich result and knowledge panel are three different things

These get mixed up constantly, and the mix-up wastes real work, because only one of the three is something you build with markup.

Surface	What produces it	What you control
Featured snippet	Google extracting text from a page it has already indexed	The clarity of the passage, and whether you allow snippets at all
Rich result, once called a rich snippet	Structured data on your page, plus Google's decision to show the enhanced form	The markup, and the visible content matching it
Knowledge panel	Google's knowledge graph, fed by many sources	Very little directly, and nothing through page markup

People add schema hoping for a featured snippet and get nothing, because there is no schema type for one. The markup side, the result types that do exist and the three rules that decide eligibility are covered in rich snippets in SEO.

How to write a passage that can be lifted

Google does not publish a list of permitted formats. What appears in results is a short paragraph, a numbered or bulleted list, a table, or a video with the relevant moment cued. So write the answer in the shape the question implies, and put it where it can be found:

• Put the direct answer in the first two sentences under a heading that matches the question. A heading phrased as the question, followed immediately by a forty to sixty word answer, is the single most reliable structure.
• Answer before you qualify. Caveats, history and context belong after the answer, not in front of it.
• Use a real list for a sequence and a real table for a comparison. A list of steps written as a paragraph cannot be lifted as a list.
• Define the term in its own sentence. For a "what is" query, a sentence of the form "X is a ..." with no pronouns and no reference to an earlier paragraph can stand alone, which is exactly what the box needs.
• Keep one question per heading. A heading that bundles three questions produces a passage that answers none of them in isolation.

How a passage reads once it is pulled out of your page and dropped into a result is worth looking at before you publish, and the preview tooling for that is covered in what a SERP simulator shows. The same discipline applies to the ordinary result text, where the length rules and the rewriting problem are set out in meta descriptions.

The two documented ways to opt out

Some publishers do not want the answer given away above the link. Google documents exactly two routes, and they are not equivalent.

1. Block every snippet. The nosnippet rule on the page removes featured snippets and ordinary result snippets together. The data-nosnippet HTML attribute does the same for a marked passage rather than the whole page. Google states that where both appear, nosnippet takes priority and no snippet is shown for the page.
2. Keep ordinary snippets and discourage featured ones. Lower the max-snippet value. Google's wording is that featured snippets "will only appear if enough text can be shown to generate a useful featured snippet", and that the shorter the setting, the less likely the page appears as one. Its documentation points at nosnippet as the definitive route and describes a low max-snippet as an experiment to tune.

<!-- no snippet of any kind for this page -->
<meta name="robots" content="nosnippet"> <!-- ordinary snippets kept, capped at 50 characters -->
<meta name="robots" content="max-snippet:50"> <!-- exclude one passage only -->
<p>Visible intro.<span data-nosnippet>Text Google should not quote.</span></p>

Google also states that it does not publish a minimum length for featured snippet eligibility, because the minimum "is variable based on a number of factors, including but not limited to the information in the snippet, the language, and the platform". So there is no number to tune against, which is why the nosnippet rule is the one to use when the requirement is absolute.

What happens on the click, and when a box is removed

A click on a featured snippet takes the reader to the part of the page that was quoted, and Google's documentation says the scroll happens automatically with no annotation needed from the site. Where its systems cannot place the passage confidently, or the browser does not support it, the click lands at the top of the page instead. That is an argument for making the quoted passage make sense on arrival, with its own heading above it.

Featured snippets also carry a policy layer the ordinary listing does not. Google applies its Search content policies plus a feature-specific rule for public interest topics: snippets on civic, historical, medical and scientific subjects should not contradict well established or expert consensus. Google says it removes snippets that break these rules, that repeated violations can stop a site showing featured snippets at all, and that these policies apply only to the snippet and do not remove the web listing. Readers can report a snippet through the Feedback link below the box.

Questions about Google featured snippets

How do I get a featured snippet?

Rank on the first page for the query, then make one passage on the page a clean, self-contained answer to it under a heading that matches the question. Google elevates a passage it has already indexed, so position comes first and clarity decides which page it lifts from.

Is there schema markup for featured snippets?

No. Google's documentation says you cannot mark a page as a featured snippet. Structured data produces rich results, which are a different surface.

Do featured snippets cost me clicks?

It depends entirely on the query. For a one line fact the reader often needs nothing else. For anything with a next step, a process or a decision, the box acts as a strong recommendation and the click follows. Check your own Search Console data by query rather than accepting a general answer.

How do I tell whether I hold one?

A snippet does not have its own report. Look for queries with a high impression count and an unusually high click-through rate at position one, then search those queries in a clean browser window and look. Include the People also ask expansions, because a quoted passage there is the same mechanism.

Can I opt out of the box but stay in the results?

Yes. That is what the max-snippet route is for, and data-nosnippet lets you exclude one passage while leaving the rest of the page quotable.

Why did my featured snippet disappear?

Three common causes, in the order worth checking: another page now answers the query more plainly, the passage was edited and lost its standalone form, or the query changed shape and Google no longer shows a box for it at all. Search the query first to see whether a box exists before investigating your own page.

The next box above the box

The skill a featured snippet rewards is a narrow and valuable one: writing one passage that answers one question completely, without leaning on the paragraph above it. That skill now pays twice, because an AI assistant assembling an answer about your market is doing the same extraction over the same pages, without a box, a link position or an impression count to tell you it happened. A page built to be quoted by Google is already built to be quoted by an assistant, and the difference is that nobody sends you a report when the second one quotes you. AI Knows Us asks the assistants the questions your buyers ask and records which pages each answer was built from, so the passage that is being read back about you is something you can see rather than guess at.