How Featured Snippets Work and Why They Sometimes Show Wrong Information

A featured snippet is the box at the top of some Google results that quotes a passage from a web page as a direct answer. It's quick and usually helpful, but because it's picked automatically, it sometimes highlights the wrong answer with the same confidence as the right one.

How featured snippets work

1. Google ranks pages for your search as usual.
2. Its systems look among the top pages for a passage that seems to answer the question directly.
3. That passage is shown at the top, with a link to the page.

Snippets can be a paragraph, a list of steps, a table or a section of a video.

Why they get things wrong

• Out of context: a sentence that answers the question on its own may be contradicted by the next paragraph, or quoted from a section describing a myth.
• Loaded questions: a search built on a false premise can pull a passage that seems to confirm it.
• Outdated pages: prices, laws, product steps and medical guidance change.
• Weak sources: when few good pages exist, the best available passage may not be good.
• Jokes and satire read literally.

Snippets and AI Overviews

For many searches, AI Overviews now appear where featured snippets used to be. They combine several sources rather than quoting one, which brings its own errors. See how AI Overviews get answers wrong.

How to check a snippet

• Click through and read the passage in context.
• Check the date and who wrote it.
• For anything important, compare with a second source or an official one.

Report a wrong snippet

Use the three-dot menu or the Feedback link beside the snippet to tell Google it's wrong or misleading.

For site owners

• Win snippets: answer the question clearly near the top of a section, then explain. See writing for featured snippets.
• Limit snippets: the nosnippet and max-snippet robots settings, or data-nosnippet on specific text, control what Google may quote.
• Keep pages current, so the passage Google quotes stays true.

Cleaner results

Search Cleaner hides Google sections you choose, such as AI Overviews, People Also Ask and the knowledge panel. It doesn't have a separate switch for featured snippets. See also zero-click searches.