Featured Snippets: Desktop vs. Mobile Study

A recent study has found that Google showed featured snippets on desktop 86.6% of the time, compared to 73.3% on mobile devices. This sort of research is important for SEO professionals to get their heads around because understanding which devices our target keywords feature on more consistently could help us tailor our content strategy in accordance.

What’s a Featured Snippet?

Before we go into more detail about the findings of the study, it’s important to clarify what a featured snippet is for those of you who don’t know. Essentially, a featured snippet is a selected search result that is found at the top of Google’s organic results, beneath the PPC ads. The main aim of a featured snippet is to answer the user’s question right away so that they don’t have to scroll and search. As well as improving user experience the featured snippet boxes help brands increase exposure. Here’s how to optimise your content for the featured snippet box.

The Findings of the Study

The study monitored a set of 265 keywords known to produce a featured snippet, over a 30 day period. It found that, on any given day you are 13% more likely to see a desktop featured snippet than a mobile featured snippet.

One of the key things to take away from this study is that just because you might score a featured snippet on desktop, there’s no guarantee you will on mobile. As a result, you should look into the cross-device consistently of your keywords and create a more efficient strategy where your featured snippets are concerned.

If your company requires additional support with your SEO and wider digital marketing strategy, please feel free to give us a call on 01707 875 721 and a member of our team will be able to help.