Position Zero on Google: What Is It? | SEO Academy

Featured snippet, position #1, position #0: what’s the difference?

Featured snippet, position #1, position #0… what exactly are we talking about? Don’t worry — by the end of this article each of these will be clear.

Let’s start with the definitions:

Featured snippet (also called position zero or position #0): a result that appears in the SERP above every other result, set apart by a box.
Position #1 (also called position 1 or first position on Google): the first result inside the SERP.

You might be wondering why these two positions matter so much. Because winning either one gives your site extraordinary visibility: you stand out from the mass of links and title tags, in the spotlight, ready to be clicked.

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What is position zero on Google?

Position zero on Google is a snippet placed by Google above the first search result as a direct answer to a question a user has typed into the search engine.

The position zero snippet therefore contains the answer to the question the user asked Google. Google identifies the exact spot in the page text where it finds that answer and puts it in the snippet along with the title, the destination page and the link.

That way the user sees straight away what they’re after.

So what’s the point of the featured snippet? To answer a user’s likely question as fast and as well as possible. Thanks to the featured snippet in position zero, the user can quench their thirst for answers without even clicking through to the page. The answer is served up right there on the search engine.

Here’s a concrete example of what happens when someone asks Google “What can you take in hand luggage?”. As you can see, before the first search result there’s a snippet with text, an image, the page title and the link. That’s position zero on Google.

Image from Google.co.uk

Featured snippets in numbers

A few figures on Google featured snippets:

they first appeared on Google in 2014;
only over the last two years, though, have they started showing up far more often:
we’ve gone from roughly 2% of SERPs carrying a snippet in 2014 to around 10% in 2016;
right now 10% of Google SERPs feature a snippet;

How do you get to position zero?

There’s no single guaranteed strategy for reaching position zero on Google, but there is a set of rules that, followed properly, will certainly help you get there.

To win position zero you have to look after your content — your text — down to the last detail. Position zero can be read as a kind of reward from Google for the quality of the page you’ve written.

To earn position zero on Google, good content needs the following characteristics:

It has to be written to answer users’ informational searches. So study every question a user might ask and write an article that answers it.
The answer to the question you’ve picked has to appear in the first paragraph of the article.
The article has to be genuinely in-depth.
The keyword — the question you’ve chosen to answer — has to be in the title tag and in the H headings.
It should contain several authoritative links.
The content has to be broken up into chapters, paragraphs and bulleted lists. These make the text easier for the user to read and understand, and therefore easier for Google too.
The site hosting the article has to be well built, with clean, well-managed code throughout.
The site has to be responsive, quick to load, user-friendly and reasonably popular.

Image from semrush,com

The upsides — and the catch

The advantages of position #0 in the SERP are the considerable extra visibility you gain and the lift in CTR.

You do need to watch out once you reach position zero, though. If the page is too well optimized for it — so well made that the snippet Google shows answers the user’s question 100% — you risk losing clicks on the page. The user, having got everything they needed straight from the Google featured snippet, won’t click through to read more.

So if you land in position 0, keep an eye on your clicks, and if you see them slipping, make the changes you need.

Why some sites don’t want position zero

Plenty of blogs and websites fight hard to win position 0 or the first position in the SERP, and it takes real effort.

Not everyone, though, wants their content over the top. The reason is simple: as we’ve explained, position 0 can cost you clicks when the content is heavily optimized — but it can also cost you clicks when Google reads the content wrongly.

Let’s unpack that. The featured snippet is created by Google and by Google alone, without our help. That means we don’t get to decide which chunk of text is fed to Big G and shown to everyone looking at a given SERP.

There are two risks here:

you write a text about one topic and see an extract published in position #0 that isn’t quite about the topic you built the article around, but about another one — or a similar one — that answers the query the user typed better while not matching the text as a whole. In that case a user may land on the page and leave immediately, because they don’t find what they wanted; or they may see a page title that doesn’t match their request and never click at all;
the other risk is that Google misreads the user’s question and serves a snippet that doesn’t quite match what they asked, so they don’t click and never reach your page.

There is a way to tell Google you’d rather this didn’t happen, and to ask not to end up in position zero. You need to add the following code:

With this meta tag, which applies to Google only, we’re asking for nosnippet, which blocks any snippet from being shown in the SERP.

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Tools that help you chase position zero

As we’ve seen, reaching position 0 on Google matters.

There are tools that can help you get there:

SEMrush (visit the official site)
A very useful tool for understanding search intent and picking the keywords that can take you to position zero on Google. There’s plenty more you can do on the platform: competitor analysis, backlink analysis, tracking how your site’s keywords rank, and so on.
SEOZoom (visit the official site)
Very similar to SEMrush, focused on the Italian market.
Google Search Console (go to the official site)
Google Search Console, a free tool from Google, also lets you run plenty of keyword analysis.

Conclusion

In this article you’ve learned what position zero on Google is, how to get there, what it gets you and which tools help you along. You’re ready to take your site to the real first position on Google.

In the other lessons of our SEO Academy you’ll find plenty more that will help with your SEO project.

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