Featured snippets disappear from the Google search results

Did Google intentionally remove the featured snippets or is this a new bug?

Google no longer shows featured snippets within the Google search results as of this morning. It is unclear if this as intentional or if Google has another bug serving or rending a search feature. We can confirm that as of around 7 am ET on Thursday, February 15th, featured snippets are not being presented in the search results.

What changed. Featured snippets are Google Search’s machine learning based snippets that can show at the top of the results and often answer your query. Here is an example of one from last year:

Now, that no longer shows a featured snippet for that query:

Glenn Gabe and Shameem Adhikarath posted more examples of this in the morning:

A bug? Many of us think that the removal of featured snippets was not intentional and that it is a bug. Yesterday, the local pack and map search results disappeared for a couple of hours, until Google fixed that bug. I suspect this will be the same.

We have reached out to Google for a comment.

Why we care. If your website normally ranks well in the featured snippet (position zero) location, you may notice less traffic this morning related to this change or bug. We will keep you posted on what we learn after we hear back from Google.

Postscript. It is now fixed, and I am able to see featured snippets again after about an hour or two of it not working: