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Google won’t add featured snippets analytics in Search Console

Don't bank on Google sharing any data on how your website is being used in the featured snippets.

Barry Schwartz on June 13, 2017 at 12:51 pm

Google is not actively working on a tool within Google Search Console for publishers to get analytics about their featured snippets.

That’s according to Gary Illyes, a Google webmaster trends analyst, who made the comments at SMX Advanced this morning during his keynote conversation with Danny Sullivan.

About a year ago, we caught Google testing featured snippets within Google Search Analytics. But those tests must be done now, because Illyes said they are not actively working on this feature.

He did say they have a solution to show publishers this data. “We have something that we think would answer those questions, but we cannot release it,” Illyes said.

They cannot release it because the people who make the decisions at Google, Illyes’ bosses, he said, won’t allow them to release it. “Some people don’t want to see this feature this launched for various [reasons].”

What he suggested is that webmasters should communicate to Google what you would do with that data so he can bring that sales pitch back to his bosses. They need to find a use case where it would help publishers make better content.

Illyes did add that Google is working on a solution to show publishers when their web pages are used by Google by voice search. But they have no such plans for featured snippets.

Illyes later added that featured snippets data is not dead, but there is a “political” reason why they are not launching it yet. We, SEOs and Gary, need to convince Google to launch it.

About The Author

Barry Schwartz

Barry Schwartz is Search Engine Land's News Editor and owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on SEM topics.