How Google Featured Snippet Callouts Improve Search Results

Google is constantly improving its search results to give users the best possible experience. One of the latest improvements is the addition of Google Featured Snippets Callouts.

Featured Snippets are designed to give users quick and easy answers to their questions right at the top of Google Search results. This “significant innovation to improve the quality” focuses on one-word (i.e. yes/no) or short sentence callouts that can be answered quickly.

Keep reading to learn about featured snippets callouts, the important signals for users that help you optimize search result listings on Google.

Google Featured Snippets callouts with MUM and the general consensus

Last month, Google launched a new feature in their search results that can show users a highlighted snippet of the page directly under the site’s title and description. This is known as Google’s “Featured Snippet Callouts” – a new way Google Search is helping users find high-quality information.

Highlighted snippets are important because they let users get information from your site without clicking through. They can make or break a user’s decision to click on your website. 

These snippets are short descriptions of each website or document a user queries Google with—and they’re also the perfect opportunity to encourage searchers to explore your site further. So, if you want users to click on your result, you need to have a great featured snippet for them to read.

By using MUM (Multitask Unified Model), Google can now see if there is a consensus for a Snippet callout by understanding how people interact with search results.

“Our systems can check snippet callouts (the word or words called out above the featured snippet in a larger font) against other high-quality sources on the web, to see if there’s a general consensus for that callout, even if sources use different words or concepts to describe the same thing. We’ve found that this consensus-based technique has meaningfully improved the quality and helpfulness of featured snippet callouts.”

With this improvement, Google uses MUM to bold sections of the featured snippet and then give searchers a more in-your-face answer to their query. This can be especially useful for complex questions requiring clicking through a website to find high-quality information. According to Google, the feature has been used over 2.4 billion times since it launched.

Not just that, Google Search is also constantly improving its ability to determine when to show Featured Snippets, especially in cases where the initial search query contains false information.

“This is particularly helpful for questions where there is no answer: for example, a recent search for “when did snoopy assassinate Abraham Lincoln” provided a snippet highlighting an accurate date and information about Lincoln’s assassination, but this clearly isn’t the most helpful way to display this result.”

Moreover, Google is expanding its “About this result” feature to eight new languages this year: Portuguese (PT), French (FR), Italian (IT), German (DE), Dutch (NL), Spanish (ES), Japanese (JP) and Indonesian (ID). This is an excellent development for those who want more information about their search results.

Example of Google Featured Snippet Callouts

In a blog on 10/10/2022, Barry Schwarts confirmed the expansion of this feature. Now, we are seeing more of that in the search results.

Barry also wondered, “I guess Google is testing more callouts in the featured snippets now?”

This means that Google is also putting a lot of effort into testing the snippets that appear with relevant search results to make them more useful. 

And with good reason, after all, research has shown that users typically spend about 9 seconds looking at search results, and in that time they either click through or go to another result. If you are not showing up in the snippet for your target keyword, you are missing out on potential customers. As a result, it’s important to know how you can make sure your business appears in the snippet when relevant keywords are searched.

Final Thoughts

With hundreds of ranking factors updating every month like Google Featured Snippets Callouts, it’s important to keep track of all the updates from Google. Then you can make the most of your Search Engine Results Pages.

All you need to do now is take a step back and check your content. Does it have the relevant keywords that your customer really needs? 

We are excited about the future of Featured Snippets and think that it represents a great opportunity for businesses to be more visible in search results.

Let’s keep an eye on EverRanks for any surprises in Google’s new algorithm in the near future. Don’t forget to follow our SEO company for more SEO/SEM services.