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by bhartzer 3348 days ago
Featured snippets are just that--they've taken a snippet from websites and are displaying them at the top of the search results for certain queries. Google doesn't say that the information is correct--they do ask for feedback (there's a link to submit feedback).

Featured Snippets are not damaging to businesses. In fact, I've seen businesses benefit greatly by getting a ton of more traffic by having them. They get more leads and sales, and more ecommerce conversions.

If you’re trying to rank for the answer to a question like “What is Larry David’s Net Worth?”, and the answer literally is a dollar figure or a “quick answer”, then I have no problem with Google “stealing” your traffic. In fact, if the answer is “$125 billion”, and Google can give searchers that answer without having to go to your website, then sobeit. What do you expect that visitor to do anyway when they get to your site? They’ll leave. They’ll hit the back button. They’ll bounce, because your site is focused too much on short, quick answers. How about creating some real content, content that will make visitors stick on your website and view more than one page?
1 comments
amelius 3348 days ago
This doesn't justify Google scraping their database.
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bhartzer 3348 days ago
I don't see this as scraping, actually. They're taking part of the content from a page and displaying it in their search results. They do that with the site's title tag and meta description tag.

I would be more concerned about the Google cache (for scraping) rather than a Featured Snippet.

Go ahead and get a featured snippet (or earn one) and you'll see the massive traffic increase and trust your site will get.

If you're concerned about them scraping, really, then go ahead and just block Googlebot from indexing the site.

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Safety1stClyde 3348 days ago
> Go ahead and get a featured snippet (or earn one) and you'll see the massive traffic increase and trust your site will get.

According to the article which we are supposedly discussing, the site in question got its traffic reduced by half after the snippet was added to the Google search results.

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