The subject of featured snippets is not new to the search engine optimization community. In fact, featured snippets may even be one of the most talked industry leads about and over-worked topics in SEO. However, recent developments with Google featured snippets have made us reconsider the true value of featured snippets in search engine results pages. For years, snippets have been the most searched place in search results and have earned a reputation for delivering more clicks, traffic, and attention than any other position in Google. Having your content featured in a featured snippet means you had the opportunity to feature twice on the first page for your key term – once in the featured snippet and once in your regular organic listing. As marketers, we coined this term "double dipping". However, that all changed in January when Google announced that it would de-duplicate and display the industry leads snippet URL only once on the first page of search results. The algorithm change has many marketers speculating: Are snippets really worth it? Have they ever been? Like it or not, featured snippets are here to stay. According to Moz, around 14-15% of Google searches now have a featured snippet, and that number will only increase. The idea of ​​snippets is purely to improve the user experience and provide direct and concise answers to a Googled question or query. So what does this mean for us as SEOs? Are featured snippets still useful? Today, featured snippets are something of a double-edged industry leads sword. While it's nice to have your site at the top of Google search results, the feature itself is a great user experience and many users won't go further once they get quick responses. Various studies have been conducted to reveal that the featured snippet often performs worse than the search result displayed below, due to the amount of information presented by Google in the snippet. Example of the featured snippet in Google On the contrary, there have also been a few studies that have proven otherwise.