Google has stopped deduplicating right-sidebar featured snippets

credit: George Nguyen

Google still plans to remove featured snippets from the right rail on desktop and move the feature into the main listings.

URLs shown in featured snippets that appear in the right rail of Google desktop results will continue to be included in the main organic listings, for the time being, anyway. For now, the right-sidebar featured snippet also appears as a regular listing within the main results column.

Why we care

Google still plans to remove featured snippets from the right rail and move the feature to the main listings. URLs for pages that earn the right-sidebar featured snippet currently appear twice on the first results page. Since this is temporary, site owners should monitor their traffic and click-through rate. When the format gets pushed into the main column, those URLs will only appear once within the organic results, as they do for regular featured snippets.

More on the news

• Deduplication only occurs for the exact URL in the featured snippet, and only on the first results page; it does not occur for other rich results, such as video featured snippets, Top Stories or Interesting Finds.
• Main column featured snippet deduplication rolled out globally on January, 22, 2020.
• During the initial featured snippet deduplication, many featured snippet URLs were also appearing as the first listing on the second results page. Google has clarified that this was not by design.
• URLs used in main column featured snippets are no longer appearing within organic results at all, according to search analytics company Rank Ranger.

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