With AI Overviews taking center stage, featured snippets are now appearing less frequently. Once the most coveted real estate in the SERPs, does targeting featured snippets still make sense in 2025?
Featured Snippets in 2025: What’s Happening?
As you may have noticed, Google is increasingly prioritizing AI overviews for queries that are a bit more complex and multifaceted. AI overviews are able to add value beyond classic search results by synthesizing multiple sources.
Featured snippets, on the other hand, are only pulled from one source and can feel too general and may even oversimplify key details from the article. Google did originally design them to give quick answers to questions like how, what, why, when, and who. However, with Google staying as fervent as always about satisfying search queries, it’s possible that featured snippets will continue taking a back seat as Google leans more on AI to deliver broader, more context-aware answers.
Recent studies also show that Featured Snippets and AI Overviews rarely appear together. Google often chooses to display one or the other instead of both. In fact, featured snippets’ SERP visibility dropped by 64% between January and June 2025, falling from 15.41% to just 5.53%.
Will Featured Snippets Totally Disappear?
The quick answer is no. There’s no concrete evidence of featured snippets disappearing totally anytime soon. Featured Snippets remain valuable for quick, fact-based questions where a concise answer is sufficient. For example, featured snippets are still likely to show up for queries like “What is machine learning?” or “How many continents are there?”, where users expect quick clarity rather than detailed insights.
However, for more complex queries, AI Overviews are expected to replace the “position zero” spot but may also integrate information from what would have been a featured snippet by using it as a cited source. Featured snippets are also expected to remain important for voice search since digital assistants like Google Assistant, Alexa, and Siri often pull answers from this format.
Overall, their role may just shift from being standalone features in the SERPs to a component of AI Overviews themselves, still earning visibility and trust when cited as part of AI-generated summaries.
Featured Snippet Decline: What Should Marketers Do?
We’ve already established that the general visibility of featured snippets is really bound to decline. To maintain its dominance in search and advertising, Google has to do what it can to keep users within its ecosystem, and zero-click searches have become the natural result of that goal. Providing the fastest and most relevant answers to user queries has always been Google’s core mission, and marketers who don’t adapt risk being left behind.
So, how do marketers keep pace with all these seismic shifts—past, present, and future? Here are the strategies worth focusing on:
1. Put in more effort to drive clicks
With zero-click searches, it’s harder than ever to actually generate organic traffic. Marketers have to exhaust all remaining means for driving actual clicks. They can do that by:
- Making titles extra engaging to drive higher click-through rates
- Optimizing meta descriptions to better match user intent and engage users
- Continuing to improve rankings— the higher your content appears, the more impressions and opportunities you have to attract clicks.
- Using structured data and schema markup which helps Google understand and enhance your listings.
- Refresh old content. Update dates, stats, and visuals to keep your pages competitive in freshness-driven SERPs.
- Don’t waste site visits
Clicks are no longer just casual encounters in the SERPs. They have become more intent-driven, purposeful, and conversion-focused.
With all the information instantly available via AI Overviews, AI Mode, and other generative models, people no longer bother clicking to get the information they need. People are only compelled to click if (a) they’re seeking depth or nuance beyond what AI summaries provide, (b) they want to verify the credibility of a source, or (c) they’re ready to take action, such as buying, subscribing, or contacting.
There’s a deeper motivation behind every click, so you need to make each visit count with content that informs, persuades, and converts.
2. Consider AI citations as a win
Like it or not, we’ve already entered a whole new era in search engine marketing. AI will forever change how content is discovered, ranked, and trusted. We can no longer measure wins the same way we did. Instead of being too hung up on clicks and traffic, we should start embracing AI citations as a win– and even as the new goal. After all, an AI citation means your content earned the ultimate endorsement: inclusion in the answers people rely on.
3. Focus on high-quality, helpful content.
A whole lot has changed, but one thing that Google has never failed to flag as important is the value of quality content. Unique and helpful content rich in E-E-A-T (Experience, Expertise, Authoritativeness, and Trustworthiness) can’t be undercut by AI because people, search engines, and large language models ultimately rely on human expertise, lived experiences, and genuine insight to ground their output in truth, nuance, and actual human perspective.
4. Shift to AI-first optimization (GEO).
SEO is not going away, but a new form of digital marketing strategy has officially entered the scene: Generative Engine Optimization (GEO). Its core function is to position your content to be cited by AI Overviews and other large language models (LLMs). Adapting to this shift is simply not optional. It’s time to rethink the way you produce content by taking into account machine readability, structured data, and semantic clarity. The sooner you align with how AI understands information, the better positioned your brand will be in AI-driven search.
5. Monitor your traffic and the industry trends as a whole.
If you’ve managed to build a strong stream of featured snippet traffic, consider closely monitoring the analytics to see how the rapid implementation of AI-generated responses is affecting your visibility. Pivot fast when patterns shift. If you don’t, the traffic you fought to win could disappear overnight, and its decline could undo months of SEO progress.
More importantly, monitor how the overall search landscape is evolving. AI is evolving at an exponential rate, and search platforms are competing fiercely to stay ahead. The only way to stay visible is to stay vigilant. The ones who react early and adjust their strategies quickly will maintain momentum; those who stay passive risk being left behind in the next wave of change.
So, should you still continue optimizing for Featured Snippets?
Yes, but not for the same reasons people used to rave about. The SEO landscape has changed so much that focusing too much on featured snippets is no longer a sustainable, long-term strategy. Instead of vying for a single snippet, the best and most future-proof strategy is to produce content so good that it becomes the material Google and AI models use to train, validate, and explain answers at scale. Cover a subject from multiple angles, so you can be cited not just for a single query but for multiple ones that branch from the same core topic or intent.
And it’s not like continuing featured snippet optimization costs a fortune. It’s still part of good on-page hygiene—simple, structured, and worthwhile. Even new sites, regardless of the size or budget, can get in the game. Most importantly, voice search remains heavily dependent on snippet-style answers, making concise, well-structured content still valuable .
Featured snippet optimization has always just been about making answers as concise and contextually accurate as possible. There’s definitely nothing wrong with continuing to follow that practice, especially because those same principles—clarity, structure, and precision—are what make content AI-friendly too. If you do still get featured snippet visibility, that’s still a good win since featured snippets continue to occupy 50% of mobile screens in some cases, giving you that instant front-page dominance. That visibility extends beyond screens too since featured snippets are still the primary data source for voice assistants like Google Assistant and Alexa.
At the end of the day, the main goal is to future-proof your visibility. Featured snippets may fade or evolve, but the foundation that supports them—clear, structured, and authoritative content—is what fuels both traditional rankings and AI-generated answers. Thus, instead of pursuing featured snippets as the primary goal, start focusing on adapting your content to build citations, visibility, and credibility across both search and AI-driven results.