Featured snippets and People Also Ask in the AI era

A featured snippet is a box, usually at the top of Google's results, showing a short passage from one website as the answer (opens in a new tab). People Also Ask is a box of related questions that expand into answers (opens in a new tab). Both remain, but AI Overviews now do much of their work. In one vendor's sample, featured snippets fell from 15.41% to 5.53% of results pages in the first half of 2025 (opens in a new tab), and tool data show most People Also Ask answers are now AI Overviews (opens in a new tab).

AEO HQ's reading of the evidence is that the same page qualities serve all three features: a direct answer, in text Google can index and quote. This guide is part of answer engine optimization (AEO), the work of making a company's pages and facts easy for AI answer engines to find, cite, and recommend, and it supports the complete guide to answer engine optimization. It separates what Google documents, what outside data show, and what AEO HQ recommends. Its sources were checked on September 27, 2026.

Scope and definitions

• Featured snippet. Google calls featured snippets "special boxes where the format of a regular search result is reversed, showing the descriptive snippet first" (opens in a new tab). They are shown "when Google thinks people want answers that can be found in a short piece of a website" (opens in a new tab), and can appear at the top of the results, in the "People also ask" section, or next to Knowledge Graph information (opens in a new tab).
• People Also Ask. Google's documentation calls it a related questions group: "a cluster of questions that are related to what the user initially searched for" (opens in a new tab).
• Snippet. The text preview under a result. Google says snippets "are primarily created from the page content itself" (opens in a new tab).
• AI Overview. An AI-written summary at the top of some Google results, with links to supporting pages. Google says AI Overviews are shown only when its systems judge them additive to classic Search, "and as such, often don't trigger" (opens in a new tab).
• Zero-click search. A search that ends without a click to a website.
• Position zero. An SEO industry nickname for the featured snippet spot above the first regular result.

This guide covers Google Search, and most of the data come from English-language results in the United States. How ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Copilot choose sources is covered in how AI assistants find sources.

How featured snippets and People Also Ask work

How Google chooses a featured snippet

Google's documentation asks, "How can I mark my page as a featured snippet?" and answers, "You can't. Google systems determine whether a page would make a good featured snippet for a user's search request, and if so, elevates it." (opens in a new tab) Its help center says Google picks them "based on how well they answer your question and how helpful they are" (opens in a new tab).

Four more documented facts shape the work:

• The quote comes from your text. Google builds snippets primarily from the page content, and may show different snippets for different searches (opens in a new tab).
• The click goes to the passage. Clicking a featured snippet takes the user directly to the section of the page that appeared in it (opens in a new tab).
• Extra content rules apply. Featured snippets on public-interest topics such as civic, historical, medical, and scientific issues shouldn't contradict "well-established or expert consensus" (opens in a new tab).
• Violations are sitewide. If a website has many snippets that break the rules, Google stops showing any featured snippets from that website (opens in a new tab).

How People Also Ask works

Google says of its related questions and searches: "While you can't control what shows up here, it can be helpful to pay attention to the related search queries when you're thinking about topics you could write about for your site." (opens in a new tab) Its documentation, last updated February 4, 2026, says that when a user expands a question, "they're shown a featured snippet" (opens in a new tab). Tool data described below show that most expanded questions now show an AI Overview instead.

The controls, and what they cost

Google gives three controls (official documentation (opens in a new tab)):

• The nosnippet rule blocks all snippets for a page, including featured snippets.
• Text marked with data-nosnippet does not appear in featured or regular snippets.
• A low max-snippet value makes a page less likely to appear as a featured snippet, but Google says it "doesn't guarantee that Google will stop showing featured snippets for your page" (opens in a new tab).

These controls reach further than featured snippets. To be a supporting link in AI Overviews or AI Mode, a page must be indexed and eligible to be shown in Google Search with a snippet (opens in a new tab), and Google names nosnippet, data-nosnippet, max-snippet, and noindex as the controls that limit what Search shows (opens in a new tab). A page with nosnippet cannot be shown with a snippet, so it fails snippet eligibility and cannot meet that condition. Bing has a similar trade-off: its guidelines say NOSNIPPET and DATA-NOSNIPPET prevent Bing from displaying captions "and may limit Copilot citation quality" (opens in a new tab).

What changed after AI Overviews

Featured snippets appear on fewer results pages

Ahrefs compared 1,000,000 randomly chosen U.S. desktop results pages from its keyword database in January and June 2025 (opens in a new tab) (vendor study):

The featured snippet decline correlated at −0.9 with the growth of AI Overviews, "but as always, correlation is not causation" (opens in a new tab), in the vendor's own words. A second vendor, Semrush, reported in its December 2025 update that featured snippets are "now seen less often when an AIO appears" (opens in a new tab) (vendor study).

Neither study shows that featured snippets have ended. Google still documents them, in a page last updated December 10, 2025 (opens in a new tab).

People Also Ask boxes remain, but most answers are now AI Overviews

The box itself is common next to AI Overviews. In Semrush's sample of 10,000 keywords, People Also Ask appeared alongside 90.03% of AI Overviews (opens in a new tab) (vendor study).

What the box shows has changed. The data come from two People Also Ask research tools, posted on LinkedIn and reported by Search Engine Roundtable (tool vendors' data; not independently verified):

• In July 2025, AlsoAsked reported that 12.6% of People Also Ask answers were AI Overviews and 87.4% were "website-cited" (opens in a new tab). The same report dates the first AI Overviews inside People Also Ask to November 2024 (opens in a new tab).
• In September 2026, AlsoAsked reported from a 2026 dataset of 19.2 million English-language samples that "97% of PAA answers in the first week of September are AIOs, up from 86% in August" (opens in a new tab).
• A second tool, Allintitle, reported that from August 2026, People Also Ask answers in its data were 100% AI-generated (opens in a new tab).

Google's own documentation has not caught up: it still describes an expanded question as showing a featured snippet, as quoted above.

AI Overviews answer the same kinds of questions

AI Overviews appear most often on searches phrased as questions. In Pew Research Center's browsing panel of 900 U.S. adults (March 2025), 18% of Google searches produced an AI summary, and 60% of searches that began with a question word such as "who," "what," "when," or "why" did (opens in a new tab).

The two formats also differ in how many sources they show. A featured snippet shows "a little piece of a website" (opens in a new tab). In the same Pew data, 88% of AI summaries cited three or more sources, and 1% cited a single source (opens in a new tab).

The two can disagree

In an audit of 1,508 baby care and pregnancy queries (peer-reviewed; ICWSM 2026), the AI Overview and the featured snippet on the same results page were inconsistent with each other in 33% of cases; medical safeguards appeared in 11% of AI Overviews and 7% of featured snippets; and featured snippets often linked to commercial sources (opens in a new tab). The study covers one health topic, so the rate may differ elsewhere.

Fewer clicks overall

In a U.S. clickstream panel from Similarweb, 68.01% of Google searches in January to April 2026 ended without a click (opens in a new tab) (vendor panel; it excludes Google's mobile app). How AI Overviews change clicks, and why estimates differ, is covered in how to rank in Google AI Overviews and AI Mode.

Steps

Steps 1 to 7 are AEO HQ's recommendations. The facts behind them are linked.

1. Collect the questions buyers ask, including People Also Ask. Google says paying attention to related queries "can be helpful" when choosing topics (opens in a new tab). Use the same questions when you test AI answers, as described in how to measure AI visibility.
2. Group the variants, and write one page per intent. Google warns that creating separate content for every variation of a search, "for example, by focusing on other queries that people have asked, or fan-out queries," primarily to manipulate rankings or AI responses violates its scaled content abuse policy (opens in a new tab). Fan-out queries are the related searches an AI feature runs on its own; see query fan-out.
3. Answer each question in the first sentences under a heading that uses the question's words. Google chooses featured snippets by how well they answer and how helpful they are (opens in a new tab), and it takes snippets from the page text (opens in a new tab). Writing methods are covered in how to write content for answer engines.
4. Keep pages you want quoted indexable and snippet-eligible. Remove noindex, nosnippet, and very short max-snippet values from them, because the same eligibility applies to AI Overviews and AI Mode (opens in a new tab). Use data-nosnippet only for passages that must never be quoted.
5. Keep one version of each fact. Answers drawn from different pages can conflict: AI Overviews and featured snippets disagreed in a third of baby care and pregnancy queries (opens in a new tab). Make the answer on your page match your other pages and profiles.
6. Leave markup out of this plan. No markup makes a page a featured snippet, as Google's "You can't" (opens in a new tab) shows, and FAQ rich results ended on May 7, 2026 (opens in a new tab). What markup does do is covered in does schema markup help AEO?
7. Measure what each tool can see. Search Console records clicks, impressions, and position for AI Overviews the same way it does for featured snippets and other results (opens in a new tab). Its Generative AI performance report counts how often links to your site were shown in AI Overviews and AI Mode (opens in a new tab). SEO tools such as Ahrefs report which results features appear for the keywords you rank for (opens in a new tab). None of these shows whether an AI answer names your company, so add a repeated prompt test, as described in our measurement design.

What the evidence shows and does not show

Antipatterns

An antipattern is a practice that looks helpful but fails or backfires. Related entries are in answer engine optimization antipatterns.

1. Making featured snippets the main goal. They appeared on about a third as many results pages in June 2025 as in January (opens in a new tab). Instead, write answers that serve featured snippets, AI Overviews, and assistants alike.
2. Using FAQ or other markup to get into People Also Ask. Google says a page cannot be marked as a featured snippet (opens in a new tab), and the FAQ rich result ended on May 7, 2026 (opens in a new tab). Instead, answer the question in visible text.
3. Publishing a page for every People Also Ask question. Google treats separate pages for other queries that people have asked, created primarily to manipulate rankings or AI responses, as scaled content abuse (opens in a new tab). Instead, answer related questions on one page per intent.
4. Blocking snippets to force clicks. nosnippet removes a page from featured snippets and, because snippet eligibility is required (opens in a new tab), from AI Overview links too. Instead, allow snippets on pages you want quoted.
5. Answers that contradict each other. Google's answer features can disagree with each other (opens in a new tab), and featured snippets on public-interest topics shouldn't contradict expert consensus (opens in a new tab). Instead, keep one checked version of each fact.
6. Counting featured snippets as the only result. Most Google searches now end without a click (opens in a new tab), and a featured snippet says nothing about AI assistants. Instead, combine Search Console, the Generative AI performance report, and a prompt test.

Checklist

FAQ

Are featured snippets going away?

Not entirely. Google still documents them (opens in a new tab), but in one vendor's sample they appeared on 5.53% of U.S. desktop results pages in June 2025, down from 15.41% in January (opens in a new tab). We found no later figure from a comparable sample that we could verify.

Do featured snippets still matter for AEO?

The page qualities that earn them still matter. A direct answer in indexable text is what Google quotes in a featured snippet, and indexing plus snippet eligibility is what Google requires for AI Overviews and AI Mode (opens in a new tab). No study has measured whether holding a featured snippet raises the chance of an AI citation.

Is People Also Ask AI-generated now?

Mostly, according to tool data. AlsoAsked reported that 97% of the answers it sampled in the first week of September 2026 were AI Overviews (opens in a new tab). The questions in the box are still useful research for what buyers ask.

Can schema markup get my page into a featured snippet?

No. Google's answer to "How can I mark my page as a featured snippet?" is "You can't" (opens in a new tab). See does schema markup help AEO? for what markup does do.

How do I stop Google from showing my page as a featured snippet?

Set a lower max-snippet value, or use nosnippet to block all snippets, as Google's documentation describes (opens in a new tab). Both limit what Google can show, and a page that cannot be shown with a snippet is not eligible to be a supporting link in AI Overviews or AI Mode (opens in a new tab).

Does a featured snippet help my page appear in ChatGPT?

No study has measured it. ChatGPT runs its own searches: OpenAI says ChatGPT search "sometimes partners with other search providers," and that a site must allow its OAI-SearchBot crawler to be eligible (opens in a new tab). See how to rank in ChatGPT search.

Change log

• September 28, 2026: First published.

Next steps

AEO HQ sells answer engine optimization services at fixed, published prices. The AEO Blueprint ($4,995) includes a content strategy, a topic map, and an answer-page architecture.