It is a fair question. AI Overviews now sit at the top of a large share of Google searches, and the People Also Ask box, which used to be full of featured snippets, has mostly switched to AI answers. If you remember fighting for “position zero”, it can feel as if the prize disappeared. It hasn’t, but it has changed. This page is part of our guide to Google SERP features.
What Google’s own pages say
The clearest evidence that featured snippets still exist is that Google still maintains the documentation for them. Its Search Central page, Featured snippets and your website, was last updated on 10 December 2025. It still describes them as “special boxes where the format of a regular search result is reversed”, and still says they “can also appear within a related questions group (also known as ‘People Also Ask’).”
Google’s Search Help page, written for searchers, also still explains them. It lists three places they appear: at the top of the results, in the “People also ask” section, and next to Knowledge Graph information on the right. And Search Console’s help page on how position is counted still has a rule for them: a featured snippet “(typically) occupies position 1.”
Google retires features it no longer uses, and says so. When it scaled back FAQ rich results, it announced it on its blog in August 2023. When it dropped them altogether, its documentation changelog said on 8 May 2026 that the feature would “no longer appear in Google Search starting May 7, 2026.” We found no such notice for featured snippets.
So why do they feel rarer?
Three changes explain most of it.
AI Overviews took the top spot on many searches
Google started rolling out AI Overviews to everyone in the US in May 2024. An AI Overview answers the search with a generated summary and links, which is the job a featured snippet used to do on its own. Google doesn’t publish how often they appear, but industry trackers report a lot: in October 2026, Search Engine Roundtable cited SE Ranking finding AI Overviews on 82.5% of US brand searches and seoClarity seeing them on over 62% of queries.
People Also Ask switched to AI answers
Opening a People Also Ask question used to show a featured snippet from one page, and AlsoAsked’s data put AI answers at 97% of PAA answers by the first week of September 2026 (reported by Search Engine Roundtable). The full timeline is in what happened to People Also Ask?
Results vary by search
Featured snippets were never on every search, and they still aren’t. Whether you see one depends on the query, your location and your device. A run of searches without one doesn’t mean the feature is gone, just that Google chose a different layout for those searches.
Featured snippet or AI Overview: how to tell them apart
| Featured snippet | AI Overview | |
|---|---|---|
| What it shows | An extract taken from one page | A generated summary of the search |
| Sources | One page, linked | Links to several pages |
| Label | No AI label | Labeled as an AI Overview |
| Can you mark a page for it? | No: “You can’t” | No: “no additional requirements” or special optimizations |
| Opt-out controls | nosnippet, max-snippet, data-nosnippet | nosnippet, data-nosnippet, max-snippet, noindex |
The quotes in the last two rows come from Google’s featured snippets page and its AI features page. If you want the full comparison between PAA and AI Overviews, see the difference between People Also Ask and AI Overviews.
Is it still worth optimizing for them?
Yes, mostly because the work is the same. Google says there are no special optimizations for AI Overviews or AI Mode, and that a page must be “indexed and eligible to be shown in Google Search with a snippet.” Those are the same basics a featured snippet needs. A page that answers a question plainly, under a heading that matches it, is a good candidate for both. Our guide to featured snippets walks through the steps.
What has changed is how you measure success. Instead of asking only “do I hold the snippet?”, ask “am I one of the sources Google shows, in the snippet, the AI Overview or the People Also Ask answers?”
How to check your own searches
- Search each of your key queries with the same setup: same browser, same country, ideally signed out.
- Note whether there is a featured snippet, an AI Overview, both or neither, and which site is credited.
- Open the People Also Ask box and check whether the answers are labeled as AI or come from a single page.
- Repeat monthly, so you can see the trend instead of a single snapshot.
For step three, PAA Box can help. It is a free Chrome extension that opens every People Also Ask question for a search, and PAA Box Pro’s “With answers” mode saves Google’s answer and source for each one to CSV. PAA Box is our tool. You can find more ways to collect the questions in where to find People Also Ask questions, and the basics of the box in our guide to People Also Ask.