All Snippets Lost, Anyone Seen This?
- Thread starter Titan243
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What kind of snippets? The featured "Rank #0" snippets? I've heard of this happening but not experienced it so I haven't dug into it to find out why. I'd imagine something algorithmic said "this site gets sub-par dwell time or CTR or is low trust" or something and that dropped you below the threshold of them wanting to share your content. Could also be that someone else came in with better structured content designed specifically to take snippets and Google realized this with offline data and then rolled that data online in a recent update.
If it's anything other than that (rating stars and all that) it's usually an issue of incorrect markup (errors) or manipulative markup (using the wrong schema structured data). Otherwise, Google is constantly testing snippets. You'll gain and lose them for this reason alone.
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Purely anecdotal, but yes that happens constantly. I'll have #1 snippet across multiple pages / queries on my site for months and then wakeup one morning and they're all gone. A few months and an update or two later, and they're back. Rinse and repeat.
There are also times when Google completely drops featured snippets from appearing in a niche. Again, purely anecdotal, but I noticed this happens mostly to best/review topics around major shopping holidays, especially the Black Friday/Christmas season.
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Thanks for the replies @Ryuzaki and @JamaicanMoose. I appreciate the insight.
It caught me pretty off-guard that I lost all of the snippets at once but I also find it interesting that my traffic hasn't taken a huge hit at the same time if one at all. @Ryuzaki The snippets I'm referring to are the position 0 ones that you mentioned and they were all for informational related topics. Hopefully, they come back in the near future or with the next update.
It caught me pretty off-guard that I lost all of the snippets at once but I also find it interesting that my traffic hasn't taken a huge hit at the same time if one at all. @Ryuzaki The snippets I'm referring to are the position 0 ones that you mentioned and they were all for informational related topics. Hopefully, they come back in the near future or with the next update.
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It seems I’ve lost every featured snippet one of my sites had. I had 208 snippets in the US and 126 in the UK, all have vanished overnight.
There were rumours of a “snippet ban” in the last core update which Google flatly denied.
https://www.seroundtable.com/amp/google-nono-snippet-wide-ban-32932.html
Well, it seems I’ve fallen victim to it. Either Google are banning people from snippets or there’s a bug in their algorithm and they have no idea how to fix it.
The assumption, of course, would be that my site has low quality, AI-written content that’s supported by dodgy backlinks from PBNs and hosted on an expired domain.
But that’s far from the case.
If it were the case, I’d expect my site to drop off page 1 and take some sort of penalty in this update.
Instead, my featured snippet rankings have either simply dropped to the position directly beneath the snippet OR I’ve remained in the top position just no longer as a snippet.
But it seems as if my site is no longer allowed or eligible to have featured snippets in the SERPs.
I’m sure Google will come along and say “no site is guaranteed a snippet etc etc” but to lose 100% of all snippets across every country suggests some more is at play here.
Has anyone else seen a drop in traffic since this core update release? If you have, it might be worth seeing if you’ve lost all your snippets!
There were rumours of a “snippet ban” in the last core update which Google flatly denied.
https://www.seroundtable.com/amp/google-nono-snippet-wide-ban-32932.html
Well, it seems I’ve fallen victim to it. Either Google are banning people from snippets or there’s a bug in their algorithm and they have no idea how to fix it.
The assumption, of course, would be that my site has low quality, AI-written content that’s supported by dodgy backlinks from PBNs and hosted on an expired domain.
But that’s far from the case.
If it were the case, I’d expect my site to drop off page 1 and take some sort of penalty in this update.
Instead, my featured snippet rankings have either simply dropped to the position directly beneath the snippet OR I’ve remained in the top position just no longer as a snippet.
But it seems as if my site is no longer allowed or eligible to have featured snippets in the SERPs.
I’m sure Google will come along and say “no site is guaranteed a snippet etc etc” but to lose 100% of all snippets across every country suggests some more is at play here.
Has anyone else seen a drop in traffic since this core update release? If you have, it might be worth seeing if you’ve lost all your snippets!
MinstrelJunkie
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A lot of people have been sharing the same issue, particularly known to happen after a core update. This post provides good coverage on it:
https://www.gsqi.com/marketing-blog/rich-snippets-impact-google-algorithm-updates/
In short, it's likely a quality issue. Focus on improving content, links, UX etc to increase your chances of qualifying for snippets. Even if the writing's fine, the site itself may not be what Google finds to be high quality. If you're confident that it is, keep producing more content and building more links. You should get back up eventually.
https://www.gsqi.com/marketing-blog/rich-snippets-impact-google-algorithm-updates/
In short, it's likely a quality issue. Focus on improving content, links, UX etc to increase your chances of qualifying for snippets. Even if the writing's fine, the site itself may not be what Google finds to be high quality. If you're confident that it is, keep producing more content and building more links. You should get back up eventually.
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I'm sorry but I disagree with this. If it were a quality issue Google wouldn't keep ranking you right at the top of the SERPs.
In many cases, the query in question no longer has a featured snippet and the site that's lost snippets still sits in position #1 - not a sign that Google has an issue with quality.
Sites that have lost snippets have gone from having 2, 3, 400 snippets to having ZERO snippets overnight, as if a switch was flicked to disable all snippets. Something is triggering that to happen, for it to be a blanket removal of every snippet the site is known to have.
MinstrelJunkie
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From the link:
This is from Glenn Gabe, one of the few legitimate SEO consultants worth their salt. He's tweeted more about it with the recent update here. Feel free to still disagree, just want to highlight who you're disagreeing with. This guy has built his entire career on understanding Google, and he isn't afraid to repeatedly state that this is a site quality issue.
Also would follow his first video link in that post where John Mueller discusses how quality per page and quality per site is different. One page might still outperform a site and rank highly, but Google also looks at the site's overall signals. This looks like it's part of a threshold for a site to be granted rich snippets.
I'd recommend going through Ryu's Kitchen Sink method and working on improving the site overall if you want those snippets back (as well as continuing to produce more quality content and generate solid links).
If you'd like, DM me the site and I'll see if you have any obvious issues. We're currently ranking for 85k featured snippets according to Ahrefs, up from 81k a month ago.
This is from Glenn Gabe, one of the few legitimate SEO consultants worth their salt. He's tweeted more about it with the recent update here. Feel free to still disagree, just want to highlight who you're disagreeing with. This guy has built his entire career on understanding Google, and he isn't afraid to repeatedly state that this is a site quality issue.
Also would follow his first video link in that post where John Mueller discusses how quality per page and quality per site is different. One page might still outperform a site and rank highly, but Google also looks at the site's overall signals. This looks like it's part of a threshold for a site to be granted rich snippets.
I'd recommend going through Ryu's Kitchen Sink method and working on improving the site overall if you want those snippets back (as well as continuing to produce more quality content and generate solid links).
If you'd like, DM me the site and I'll see if you have any obvious issues. We're currently ranking for 85k featured snippets according to Ahrefs, up from 81k a month ago.
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Cheers! Will drop you a DM.
Not disagreeing to cause an argument and I appreciate your thorough reply (I'll also have a good read of Glenn's comments). As you can imagine, it's just very frustrating to see consistent growth for it to then come to a sudden end.
I think the most frustrating thing is, as with any core update, Google only providing the vaguest of information. Even a simple "we have tweaked site-quality parameters that make a site eligible for snippets' would be great. Instead, as they did in November 2021, they just deny sites being removed from snippets.
Not disagreeing to cause an argument and I appreciate your thorough reply (I'll also have a good read of Glenn's comments). As you can imagine, it's just very frustrating to see consistent growth for it to then come to a sudden end.
I think the most frustrating thing is, as with any core update, Google only providing the vaguest of information. Even a simple "we have tweaked site-quality parameters that make a site eligible for snippets' would be great. Instead, as they did in November 2021, they just deny sites being removed from snippets.