What is a featured snippet?

A featured snippet is the highlighted answer box Google sometimes places above the first organic result, pulling a short excerpt directly from a page it judges to best answer the searcher's question, alongside that page's title and URL. It can take a few different shapes: a paragraph snippet answering a definition-style question, a numbered or bulleted list for a process or ranking, or a table pulled from structured data on the page. Winning one usually comes down to structure more than raw authority, a page that states the question as a clear heading and answers it in a tight, self-contained paragraph or list right underneath tends to get pulled over a page that buries the same answer inside a long, meandering section. Because a featured snippet already occupies a spot above position one, it effectively lets a page 'skip the line' in visibility, though it can also reduce click-through if the snippet itself fully satisfies the searcher, something worth weighing before restructuring content purely to chase one.