What is Featured Snippet?
A featured snippet is a block at the top of Google's results that extracts a passage from a single ranking page to answer a query directly, showing the extracted text with a link to its source. It predates AI Overviews and is a different feature.
A featured snippet is extraction from one page. Google selects a passage — a paragraph, a list or a table — and displays it verbatim with attribution. Nothing is generated; the words are the page's own.
An AI Overview is synthesis across several sources. It writes new text summarising multiple pages and links them as references. The two can appear on the same results page and are frequently confused, including by tools: a checker that reads the answer box as an AI Overview will report an Overview appearing where none did.
The optimisation overlaps but is not identical. Both reward a direct, self-contained answer placed immediately under a heading that matches the question. Featured snippets additionally reward being an already-ranking page, since the snippet is drawn from the existing top results, while an Overview can cite a source that does not rank in the visible ten at all.
Why Featured Snippet matters
It is the original zero-click surface, and the clearest demonstration that formatting, not just ranking, decides who gets read aloud.
Extraction, not generation
The text shown is lifted from one page verbatim. Nothing is written by a model.
Drawn from pages already ranking
Snippets are selected from the existing top results, so ranking is a prerequisite in a way it is not for an AI Overview.
40-60 words under a matching heading
A self-contained answer immediately after a question-shaped heading is the format that gets selected.
Not the same as answerBox in an API
SERP APIs commonly return featured snippets under a key named answerBox. Reading it as an AI Overview overstates Overview coverage.
Common questions
No. A featured snippet extracts a passage verbatim from one ranking page. An AI Overview generates new text summarising several sources and lists them as references. Both sit above the results and both reduce clicks, but they are selected differently and optimised for differently.