Google’s Featured Snippets May Bring Anchors To Desktop

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A functionality Google currently offers on mobile devices could be coming to desktops soon. An expert spotted highlighted anchor text on a site accessed via Google’s featured snippets.

In a series of tweets, digital marketing expert Glenn Gabe described the new search feature linked to Google’s Featured Snippets.

He’s referring to a functionality Google currently supports on mobile devices. If a Featured Snippet takes the searcher to an AMP page, the search giant can then take the searcher down to the place on the page where the content from the Featured Snippet is. It then highlights that part of the content in yellow, making it easier to spot on the page. Clicking on Google’s Featured Snippet brings up the highlighted anchor text in the middle of the page.

Featured Snippets are information boxes in which the format is changed up a bit and the description from the snippet is listed first, followed by the title of the page. When you tap on a snippet on a mobile device, it highlights the content from the snippet in the page after it opens. This certainly makes it easier to find the content on the page.

According to Gabe, Google is using the targetText functionality it has been working on to do this. TargetText allows users to jump down on the page to specific text anywhere on the page instead of just opening the link at the top of the content like usual.

Based on the tests he ran of the targetText functionality on desktop, it seems like the feature works quite well, although as with anything that’s in testing, there are some issues. Specifically, he highlighted one query that highlighted pretty much all the text on a page.

That wouldn’t be very helpful. It is a work in progress, after all. The company has been working on improving Featured Snippets for quite some time.

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