Featured Snippets taking over my Niche

[JesterMagic]

Anyone seeing a rise in Featured Snippets on the SERPS?

My niche has seen a spike in them and they are pretty large (3 slots in the serps). It's the first time I have seen table data condensed (just 1 featured snippet) with a title and description up top and then a summary of each row with text at the bottom saying six more rows and 1 more column (along with the actual page title and link to the site). We were first on a number of pages and now 4th or fifth spot is getting first with the featured snippet (plus the fourth or fifth spot).

I converted all my row stuff to divs a few years ago now I am wondering if I should convert it back :). The Google structured data testing tool doesn't report any markup beyond author and breadcrumbs on the featured page so the featured snippet info was gathered automatically some other way. (and it's not the best info either)

[Andy Langton]

Yep, the expansion of the "answer box" is definitely happening, and is not restricted to question/answer patterns.

To me it harks back to a time when Google said that the "ideal" would be for them to show the one "right" result for a query, and not much else. The "answer box" section seems to be the preferred placement for the 'one true result'.

From what I've seen, Google is intending to feature a particularly relevant result at the top, but is not currently very choosy about what that text is. Suspect there may be some RankBrain content interpretation going on.

I've also seen lots of rotation of which site gets featured, so no doubt some data collection going on behind the scenes too.

[JesterMagic]

The results I have seen for featured snippets have been pretty poor (not surprised). For one the wiki page Google uses in one query is VERY out of date. There really isn't a better page so IMO no snippet would be better.

I find that they are also appearing for non question queries.

Search Engine Round Table has a recent post about the featured snippets not using markup which validates my findings.

[seroundtable.com...]