What is a featured snippet?

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Featured snippet: A Google result that shows a short extract answering the query first, with the page title and link under it, often at the top of the results.

Google says its systems decide which page gets a featured snippet, and there is no markup to request one. You can keep a page out with the nosnippet rule.

A page that wins featured snippets usually answers in its opening lines, which is the same habit that makes a page easy for an AI assistant to quote. Rankings vs AI citations compares the two.

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