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Home » Search Engines » Not All Google Featured Snippets are Informational

Not All Google Featured Snippets are Informational

Posted on February 24, 2017 Written by Bill Hartzer

Ever since Google started introducing Featured Snippets into their search results, I always thought of Google Featured Snippets as being informational and helpful. And, non-commercial. Well, today my opinion of featured snippets quickly changed when I saw the Google showing a featured snippet for this search query: banking equipment.

For that search query, Google displays this featured snippet:

google featured snippets banking equipment

That “featured snippet” certainly reads more like an ad for SEICO’s banking equipment products than something I would expect: a history of banking equipment, a list of various banking equipment machines (coin sorters, paper currency sorters, ATMs, etc.). But no, somehow Google thinks that it’s more appropriate to show ad-like text than anything informational.

Take a look at what I’m seeing in the search results for “banking equipment”:

google featured snippets

I see:
– Google AdWords Ad
– Google AdWords Ad
– Google AdWords Ad
– Google AdWords Ad
– Google Featured Snippet (ad)
– Google Organic Search Result (URL same as featured snippet)
– Wikipedia page

I don’t know if an SEO is behind this particular featured snippet (yes, it’s possible to get Google to show your page as a featured snippet) by optimizing the content on the page. But seriously, Google? The Google Featured Snippets is far from informational and a good example of Google Featured Snippets gone bad.

Maybe my mistake here is that I assume that Google Featured Snippets should be informational and non-commercial?

Google says this about featured snippets: “What’s different with a featured snippet is that it is enhanced to draw user attention on the results page. When we recognize that a query asks a question, we programmatically detect pages that answer the user’s question, and display a top result as a featured snippet in the search results.”

In this case, the search query does not ask a question. My question is, though, should we assume that Google featured snippets are non-commercial in nature and answer a question in a certain way, without promoting a certain company and their products or services?

In this particular case, Google has no question answered for the search query (the search query is not a question), and Google promotes one particular company in the featured snippet.

Filed Under: Google, Search Engines

About Bill Hartzer

Bill Hartzer is the CEO of Hartzer Consulting and founder of DNAccess, a domain name protection and recovery service. A recognized authority in digital marketing and domain strategy, Bill is frequently called upon as an Expert Witness in internet-related legal cases. He's been sharing insights and research here on BillHartzer.com for over two decades.

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