A featured snippet is a result where Google shows a passage from a page first, above the page's title and link, usually at the top of the results, to answer the query directly. Google's systems choose the page automatically; there is no markup that requests it. Since 2020 a page shown as the snippet is not repeated lower down, and Search Console counts it as position one.
What Google says
That featured snippets are special boxes where the format of a regular result is reversed, with the descriptive snippet shown first. That its systems decide whether a page would make a good featured snippet for a search and elevate it if so. That you cannot mark a page up to become one. And that clicking a snippet takes the user to the exact passage on the page.
The forms it takes
A paragraph, for definitions and direct questions. A list, for steps and rankings. A table, for comparisons and prices. Occasionally a video. The form follows the query: a how-to gets a list, a what-is gets a paragraph, a versus or a cost gets a table. Match your formatting to the form the query already shows.
How to write for it
Rank on the first page for the query first, because snippets are drawn from there. Put the question as a heading and a complete, plain answer of a sentence or two immediately under it. For lists and tables, use real list and table markup rather than styled paragraphs, so the passage can be lifted cleanly. Keep the answer current and dated. The pages that win are the ones that would satisfy a reader who read only the extract.
A price comparison table that nobody else publishes is a classic winner, because the query wants a table, the table is the answer, and the snippet shows it with your name beneath.
What it is worth
Position one with a caveat: some searchers read the box and never click. For queries where the answer is the whole point, the snippet can reduce clicks. For queries where the snippet is a preview of something worth reading or buying, it is the best placement on the page, and it is a placement AI answers also draw from.
Sources
Where this shows up in the tracker
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Related terms
People Also Ask
People Also Ask is the box of related questions Google shows among its results, each expanding to reveal a short answer taken from a web page, with more questions appearing as you open them. The answers are featured snippets, chosen automatically from pages that answer the question directly. You cannot apply for a place; you can write pages that are easy to choose.
AI Overview
An AI Overview is the AI-generated answer Google places above the ordinary search results for many queries. It answers the question on the results page, citing a handful of sources, which means a share of searchers never click through to any website at all.
CTR
Click-through rate is the share of people who saw your result and clicked it: clicks divided by impressions, shown as a percentage in Search Console. It falls steeply with position, so it only means anything when compared against the position it was earned at. Whether Google uses clicks to rank is a question with two honest halves, covered below.
Title tag
The page title is the text in a page's title element, shown as the clickable headline in search results. Google uses it as the main source for that headline, along with the visible heading, link text and other prominent text, and will rewrite it when it judges the title unhelpful. A good title says specifically what the page is, in the words the searcher used, without padding.