Google Launches Expandable Featured Snippets

If there is one company that never stops iterating on its product, then it's Google. 2018 has been a busy year for the search engine giant with the launch of cameo, the revamping of their entire marketing suite, the launch of voice schema support and so much more.

Rich snippets get an update

Google latest announced is a new form of featured snippets aimed at showing you more useful aspects of a specific topic related to your search. Google has identified several search queries that normally follow one another as related questions and now collates these and provides this data to users in an accessible accordion within a SERP.

So, when you search for a query that triggers this new format, you will get a handful of expandable snippets below the main featured snippet with more information.

One example: If you search for [quartz vs granite] you get the main featured snippet, with images, and then four additional featured snippets that can be expanded to show you ideas on costs, benefits, weight and durability.

Another example: When you search for [emergency fund], you get the main featured snippet, followed by size, importance, savings account and purpose.

Here are some screenshots showing this off:

A word from Google

These new panels are automatically generated based on our understanding of these topics from content on the web, and we hope you find them useful as they roll out over the next few days. This update is the latest in a series of improvements we’ve been making to help you get information quickly with Search. As always, if you have any feedback on the information you see, please let us know via the feedback link at the bottom of the search results page.

Multifacet snippets on the rise

Back in February, Google announced multifaceted featured snippets; these are featured snippets that can be surfaced for queries that are sufficiently broad enough to allow for more than one interpretation of what was submitted. In these instances, the SERPs will include more than one featured snippet, with the original query rewritten as the questions the algorithm assumes the user may have intended or are most popular with other users. The results displayed in the multifaceted snippet will reflect those new questions. 

Tags: Google Search, search, SEO