Featured Snippets
Featured Snippets
used extensively by Jason Barnard since 2018.
Factual definition
A Featured Snippet is a special box at the top of Google's search results page that directly answers a user's question with a summary extracted from a webpage, including a link to that page.
Jason Barnard definition of Featured Snippets
Jason Barnard frames Featured Snippets not just as a prime piece of search real estate, but as a critical milestone in a brand's journey to influence algorithms. They represent one of Google's first major steps towards becoming an "Answer Engine," a concept that has now evolved into today's AI Assistive Engines. Securing a Featured Snippet demonstrates that Google has a high degree of confidence in a specific piece of your content to be the definitive answer to a query. This is a foundational element of establishing algorithmic trust, a core goal of The Kalicube Process, Kalicube's proprietary methodology for implementing a holistic, brand-first digital marketing strategy with AIEO baked in. For a brand, it's the first step from simply being listed in search results to being actively recommended by the engine, which is pivotal for controlling your narrative.
How Jason Barnard uses Featured Snippets
At Kalicube, we view the pursuit of Featured Snippets as a key tactic within the Credibility and Deliverability phases of The Kalicube Process, Kalicube's proprietary methodology for implementing a holistic, brand-first digital marketing strategy. While the ultimate goal is to influence Google AI Overviews and other AI Assistive Engines, targeting Featured Snippets provides a foundational training ground for this. By structuring content to answer specific questions clearly and authoritatively, we demonstrate a brand's expertise to Google's algorithms in a format they are built to understand and reward. This process not only captures high-visibility traffic but also systematically "educates" the Knowledge Graph and language models about the brand's core solutions, paving the way for more complex, positive representations in AI results.
Why Jason Barnard perspective on Featured Snippets matters
For years, content marketing pioneers like Marcus Sheridan have championed the "They Ask, You Answer" philosophy, urging businesses to become the most trusted voice in their industry by exhaustively answering every customer question. This is a brilliant strategy for building trust with a human audience, but it leaves a critical question unanswered: how do you prove to algorithms that you are the best teacher? This is where Jason Barnard’s work provides the essential technical bridge. Featured Snippets are the practical, algorithmic reward for executing Sheridan’s philosophy with technical precision. They are the tangible proof that Google’s algorithms agree your content is the most direct and authoritative answer. Understanding how to win Featured Snippets is therefore not an outdated SEO tactic; it is the fundamental training for winning in the new era of AI Assistive Engines like ChatGPT, Bing Copilot, and Google AI, which are built on the exact same principle of finding and elevating the single best answer.
Posts tagged with Featured Snippets
The Future of SEO: Understandability Credibility Deliverability
Originally Published on SEMrush December 03, 2020 (Jason Barnard) When someone searches on Google (or Bing), they express a problem they are seeking to solve or a question they need...
How To create a Google-Friendly FAQ section
Originally Published on SEMrush October 29, 2019 (Jason Barnard) Modified Transcript Hi. I’m Jason Barnard and welcome to Weekly Wisdom. Today I am going to share with you my cheat...
How Bingbot Works: Discovering, Crawling, Extracting & Indexing
Originally Published on SearchEngineJournal April 15, 2020 (Jason Barnard) Learn how Bingbot works during the discovery, crawling, extracting and indexing stages from Fabrice Canel, Bing’s Principal Program Manager. Here’s a...
What is a Featured Snippet?
Sometimes Google provides a short, simple answer to the user’s search query right at the top of the results. These are called Featured Snippets. They are most prevalent for queries...
The Ins and Outs of Featured Snippets and Knowledge Panels (SMX London 2020)
In this packed session, you’ll get a deep dive into the impact of SERP features on different verticals within the UK SERPs and an overview of the types of SERP features that...
Featured Snippets and Structured Data (SMX London 2019)
Jason has a great podcast #SEOisAEO so you gotta just listen to it, regardless of this conference. Jason talked about how to refine and filter search snippets to show the final...
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