Google’s right-sidebar featured snippets are no more

The featured snippet variant now appears in Google’s main results column, as the company announced in January.

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The right-sidebar featured snippet variant of Google search results has been migrated into the main results column, a Google spokesperson has confirmed. This change is the part of Google’s featured snippet deduplication, which began on January 22.

Mordy Oberstein, CMO of RankRanger, spotted the update had rolled out Thursday.

Pulp Fiction Right Hand Featured Snippet 1
Google formerly showed featured snippets in the right sidebar on desktop.

The screenshot above, taken before deduplication by SEO consultant at G-Squared Interactive Glenn Gabe, shows a right-sidebar featured snippet for the query “pulp fiction brett.”

Screen Shot 2020 03 20 At 9.47.44 AM
The featured snippet is now shown in the mainline search results.

This screenshot, taken after deduplication, shows the same featured snippet in the main results column.

Why we care

For those who used to own right-sidebar featured snippets, your URL now only appears once on the first results page instead of twice. Now that the feature is part of the main results column, other organic listings appear further down on the page.

Whether you own the featured snippet or another result on a page that has a deduplicated featured snippet, you should monitor your Google Search Console and Analytics reports to see how much of an impact this has on your traffic and click-through rates.

More on the news

  • Prior to January 22, the URL for featured snippets would display twice on the first results page: once as part of the featured snippet and another time as a regular organic listing.
  • During the initial deduplication rollout, featured snippets would continue to appear as usual but the corresponding organic listing would appear as the top position on the second results page. This is no longer the case and Google has clarified that it was not by design.
  • Google temporarily stopped deduplicating right-sidebar featured snippets but did announce that it would eventually be moved to the main results column.

Opinions expressed in this article are those of the guest author and not necessarily Search Engine Land. Staff authors are listed here.


About the author

George Nguyen
Contributor
George Nguyen is the Director of SEO Editorial at Wix, where he manages the Wix SEO Learning Hub. His career is focused on disseminating best practices and reducing misinformation in search. George formerly served as an editor for Search Engine Land, covering organic and paid search.

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