Opting Out of Google Featured Snippets Led to 12% Traffic Loss [SEO Experiment]

Everybody desires to win Google featured snippets. Proper?
At the very least, it was that means. Winning the featured snippet sometimes meant further visitors, partially as a result of Google confirmed your URL twice: as soon as within the featured snippet and once more in common search outcomes. For publishers, this was referred to as "double-dipping."
All that modified in January when Google announced they'd de-duplicate search outcomes to indicate the featured snippet URL solely as soon as on the primary web page of outcomes. No extra double-dips.
Publishers apprehensive as a result of older studies instructed profitable featured snippets drove much less precise visitors than the "pure" high rating outcome. With the brand new change, profitable the featured snippet may really now result in much less visitors, no more.
This led many SEOs to take a position: do you have to choose out of featured snippets altogether? Are featured snippets inflicting publishers to lose extra visitors than they doubtlessly acquire?
This is how we discovered the reply.

The experiment

Working with the workforce at SearchPilot, we devised an A/B break up check experiment to take away Moz Weblog posts from Google featured snippets, and measure the impression on visitors.
Utilizing Google's data-nosnippet tag, we recognized weblog pages with profitable featured snippets and utilized the tag to the primary content material of the web page.
Our working speculation was that these pages would lose their featured snippets and return to the "common" search outcomes under. A majority of us additionally anticipated to see a damaging impression on visitors, however wished to measure precisely how a lot, and establish whether or not the featured snippets would return after we eliminated the tag.
On this instance, Moz misplaced the featured snippet virtually instantly. The snippet was as a substitute awarded to ContentKing and Moz returned to the highest "pure" place.

Right here is one other instance of what occurred in search outcomes. After launching the check, the featured snippet was awarded to Backlinko and we returned to the highest of the pure outcomes.

One necessary factor to bear in mind is that, whereas these key phrases triggered a featured snippet, pages can rank for a whole lot or 1000's of various key phrases in several positions. So the impression of dropping a single featured snippet could be considerably softened when your URL ranks for a lot of completely different key phrases — some which earn featured snippets and a few which do not.

The outcomes

After including the data-nosnippet tag, our variant URLs rapidly misplaced their featured snippets.
How did this impression visitors? As a substitute of gaining visitors by opting-out of featured snippets, we discovered we really misplaced a big quantity of visitors fairly rapidly.
General, we measured an estimated 12% drop in visitors for all affected pages after dropping featured snippets (95% confidence degree).

This chart represents the cumulative impression of the check on natural visitors. The central blue line is the very best estimate of how the variant pages, with the change utilized, carried out in comparison with how we might have anticipated with none adjustments utilized. The blue shaded area represents our 95% confidence interval: there's a 95% likelihood that the precise final result is someplace on this area. If this area is wholly above or under the horizontal axis, that represents a statistically vital check.

What did we be taught?

With the addition of the “data-nosnippet” attribute, the check had a considerably damaging impression on natural visitors. On this experiment, proudly owning the featured snippet and never rating within the high outcomes offers extra worth to those pages when it comes to clicks than not proudly owning the featured snippet and rating within the high outcomes.
Including within the “data-nosnippet” attribute, not solely have been we in a position to cease Google from pulling knowledge in that part of the HTML web page to make use of as a snippet, however we have been additionally in a position to affirm that we might rank once more within the SERP, whether or not that's rating in place one or decrease.
As an extra device, we have been additionally monitoring key phrases utilizing STAT Search Analytics. We have been in a position to monitor adjustments in rating for pages that had featured snippets, and seen that it took about seven days or extra from the time of launching the check for Google to cache the adjustments we made and for the featured snippets to be overtaken by one other rating web page, if one other web page was awarded a featured snippet spot in any respect. The turnaround was faster after we ended the check, although, as a few of these featured snippets returned as rapidly as the subsequent day.
Nonetheless, a damaging side of working this check was that, though some pages have been crawled and listed with the newest adjustments, the featured snippet didn't return and has now both been formally given to competing pages or by no means returned in any respect.
To summarize the numerous findings of this check:

1. Google's nosnippet tags can successfully choose out publishers from featured snippets.
2. On this check, we measured an estimated 12% drop in visitors after dropping featured snippets.
3. After ending the check, we did not win again a portion of the featured snippets we beforehand ranked for.

For the overwhelming majority of publishers profitable the featured snippet possible stays the good technique. There are undoubtedly exceptions however as a normal "finest observe" if a key phrase triggers a featured snippet, it is sometimes in your finest curiosity to rank for it.
What are your experiences with profitable featured snippets? Tell us within the feedback under.

Observe: This submit was co-authored by Cyrus Shepard and Rida Abidi.

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