Can category paginated pages rank for Featured Snippets lists?

[thedonald123]

Over the past few months I've been seeing blog post of the type 100 Best Widgets rank in the top 3 results where collections e.g. category style pages used to rank. In most cases these blog posts are at the same time being used for Featured Snippets Lists. They don't always rank #1 but they grab position #0. It seems clear that their sudden appearance at the top of the SERPS is related to their being used as featured snippets.

I've been trying all sorts of changes to HTML structure and content of the items listed on the category pages to make them more like lists, but have seen success for only a day at most. Even though my category pages are still ranking in the top 3 I can't grab position 0.

My questions are:
1. Are category pages ranking for Featured Snippets Lists?

2. Have blog posts seen a boost over Category pages lately?
Does Google prefers blog posts for Featured Snippets Lists over collection style groups of pages such as taxonomy style pages. e.g. categories, tags, products

2. Is it possible that the preference is due to pagination? i.e. Google doesn't use Paginated content for Featured Snippets Lists AND If so is this a feature or a bug?

[goodroi]

It's possible but unlikely. Category pages usually don't have the right stuff to trigger it. Blog posts tend to be more likely to have the right stuff to trigger it. IMHO its less about pagination and more about category pages unlikely to have the ingredients that Google wants on a page for it to to trigger a featured snippet. Paying attention to html and technical aspects tends to help.

[keyplyr]

Agree pagination likely is not a factor. Also agree category pages usually don't score enough points to get featured.

Have you tested from other IPs and browsers not associated with your search history or logins? You may be seeing this, bur others may see something completely different.

I like to test with a VPN. I almost always see different results. This gives me a bigger picture.

[thedonald123]

like to test with a VPN. I almost always see different results. This gives me a bigger picture

I just signed up for a 7 day free trial at semrush. They have snapshots of their SERPS which is helpful because featured snippets seem to be very volitaile. Not sure if it's the VPN or Google constant testing of featured snippets.

Also, I'm finding some extremely low volume and low competition results where my category pages are being displayed for Featured Snippets. So, it is definitely possible, but probably as suggested by goodroi it's difficult for a category page to compete with a blog post.

I'm seeing blog posts rank now due to their featured snippet where only Category pages used to rank.
I'm surprised this isn't talked about more. It's causing a significant decrease in my traffic.