Did you know there's a spot on Google that ranks higher than position one? It's the little answer box that sometimes appears right at the top of the results — the featured snippet, often called position zero. Google pulls a short, direct answer straight from a web page in its index so the searcher gets what they came for without scrolling. Land there and you get more visibility, more authority and a healthy lift in clicks — all for free. Here's how featured snippets work and what you can do to earn one.
- A featured snippet is the answer box above position one — Google's "position zero".
- The four formats are paragraphs, lists, tables and video; paragraphs are most common.
- Answer a real question directly, in a heading followed by a concise reply.
- The same clear answers also feed AI Overviews and other AI search results.
What a featured snippet actually is
For years now Google's results have been much more than a list of blue links. On certain searches — especially questions — a box appears above the first organic result with a ready-made answer. That's the featured snippet. Because it sits above position one, people call it position zero. The content inside it isn't written by Google; it's lifted from a page already in the index. Research has long shown snippets can roughly double click-through rates compared with the standard top spot, so it's a genuinely worthwhile target.
The four types of featured snippet
Snippets come in four main formats, and the one Google chooses depends on the query. Paragraphs are by far the most common and show up for definitions and how, why, who and where questions. Lists — numbered or bulleted — appear for recipes, rankings and step-by-step guides. Tables are rarer and tend to show for comparisons involving prices, dates or figures. Video snippets pull a short clip from a longer video, usually for "how-to" searches, and your video generally needs to rank in the top results for the term.
Answer the right questions
Snippets love questions. A large share of the keywords that trigger them start with a question word — "why", "can", "how" — so the simplest way to win one is to ask and answer real questions in your content. Cover several related questions across an article, or build a small cluster of pieces around the questions your customers actually type. Put the question in a heading, then give a tidy, self-contained answer directly beneath it.
Match genuine search intent
Understanding search intent is the whole game. Satisfying what the searcher wants is Google's number-one goal, so pages that answer the query clearly and completely are the ones that earn the snippet. Before that happens, Google needs to see that your content is high quality and that people engage with it. Keep in mind a snippet isn't always shown — if Google reckons another result answers better, it'll feature that instead. Either way, writing genuinely helpful answers is never wasted effort.
Structure content to be pulled
How you lay out a page matters as much as what it says. For paragraph snippets, aim for an answer of roughly 40–60 words. For lists, six or so items is a good rhythm; for tables, a handful of clear rows. Use a logical heading structure — H1, then H2s and H3s — so your content is scannable, and add images to break up the text (with descriptive alt text). The pattern that works: put the searcher's question in a header, then place the answer you want featured in the paragraph right below it.
Featured snippets and AI search
Here's the modern bonus. The same clear, well-structured answers that win featured snippets are exactly what AI answer engines — Google AI Overviews, ChatGPT and the like — pull from and cite. Writing a direct reply to a genuine question now helps you in two places at once: the classic snippet box and the AI-generated summaries increasingly sitting above it. Structure your content well and you're future-proofing your visibility.
Earning position zero takes clear intent, tidy structure and content people find genuinely useful. Start with questions that have obvious intent, answer them plainly, and give Google something clean to lift. If you'd like a hand working out which snippets are within reach for your site, that's exactly the sort of thing we do.
