Featured snippet deduplication (2020): what changed and what to do

What Google changed#

Before January 2020, a page shown as the featured snippet usually also appeared as a normal listing on the same results page. From 22 January 2020 Google stopped repeating it. Google’s Danny Sullivan explained on X: “If a web page listing is elevated into the featured snippet position, we no longer repeat the listing in the search results.”

He added that featured snippets “count as one of the ten web page listings we show.” Google SearchLiaison said the next day that the overall set of web results had not changed: the first page still held ten unique listings, as before.

When it rolled out#

Search Engine Roundtable reported that Google had tested the change from November 2019. On 22 January 2020 Danny Sullivan said it was live for all results worldwide, and on 23 January 2020 Google SearchLiaison posted: “This change launched yesterday for 100% of our search results globally.” Google did not announce it in advance or on its blog; it confirmed the change after SEOs spotted it.

What is known about its impact#

Google published no traffic figures. The effect it described is structural: a site that holds a featured snippet gets one listing on the first page instead of two. Danny Sullivan said deduplication “is only about what happens on the first page,” with no promise the listing would reappear on page two. Search Engine Roundtable’s summary of Google’s answers adds that People also ask, top stories and other vertical features were left alone.

What site owners should do#

The system still exists. Google’s ranking systems guide lists deduplication among its current systems and says that when a page becomes a featured snippet, Google does not repeat the listing later on the first page. In practice:

• Treat a featured snippet as your first page listing, not as a bonus on top of one.
• Report featured snippet queries separately, because click patterns differ from normal listings.
• To stay out of featured snippets, Google’s featured snippets documentation suggests lowering the max-snippet rule; nosnippet also removes your normal text snippet.

How to check whether it affected you#

Search Console keeps only 16 months of data, so its reports no longer cover January 2020. Use archived analytics exports and look at landing pages that held featured snippets, comparing the weeks either side of 22 January 2020. The January 2020 core update ran the week before, so separate the two. The Google Algorithm Updates timeline lists both.

Related updates#

• The January 2020 core update launched nine days earlier.
• BERT had changed how Google chose featured snippets three months before.
• Passage ranking was the next change to how Google picks page sections.