Google often posts answers and summaries (featured snippets) to questions and inquiries at the top of the search results page from information the search engine deems as the best response to the search. Google extracts the information from an existing web page indexed on the Internet and displays it at the top left of the page--the most valuable real estate on the Internet. Google provides the website credit for the information it "borrows" by including a link back to the source page.
Featured snippets are very difficult to obtain, they have the best position on the SERP, and rank as the best content compared to all of the other possible search results. Therefore obtaining a featured snippet for a website is highly valued by SEO experts. Below are some sample featured snippets Google awarded to blog articles, product pages, and category pages I wrote. After 18-months at Les Olson IT, I achieved 550 featured snippets and 250 while at Vitality Medial. Many of the web pages with featured snippets at Vitality Medical have lost their featured snippets but still rank mostly in the top ten results since I have left the company. Each image displays the search term used in Google, the number of web pages competing for the search term (some above 100 million), the summary, and the link back to the source page. There are many other featured snippets Google awards my content, but these should provide a good idea of the quality of my content and the SEO results.
