Google’s blue highlight for featured snippets has now expanded to People Also Ask results. We saw blue highlights for PAA results as a test last month, with the highlight now showing for all users by default.
Google is now testing showing blue highlights alongside bolding within People Also Ask results. We saw Google rollout blue highlighting within featured snippets earlier in the month, with the next logical step for expansion being within PAA. As a note, while the blue highlight can appear alongside featured snippets, it can also appear separately for queries. As a hint to when the test appears, the PAA question font will show differently.
Google has now rolled out blue highlighting of content and larger font within paragraph featured snippets. This test dates back to September of 2022, where the highlight would should in both yellow and blue. On mobile, featured snippets still appear as bold (the previous approach) alongside the blue highlight. This launch looks to apply in most cases of full-width paragraph featured snippets, but the previous approach does appear in some instances too, when appearing within knowledge panels. Also spotted by Krinal Mehta.
The rollout of blue highlighting of content in featured snippets ended up being the story of the month. While Google doesn’t show the highlight in all instances, it is the primary method that Google is now using. Another test I noticed later on in the month was related to this update, with the highlight starting to be shown for PAA results.
Google is now running a test focused on highlighting relevant content in Featured Snippets and PAA results. This test is a replacement of the bolding functionality, which first rolled out in July of 2021. The highlight functionality for web pages dates back to 2019, originally focused on on-site content with scroll-to-text on mobile with AMP. The test shows with either a yellow or blue highlight, often presenting the text in a larger font.
The latest version of Chrome is now showing scroll-to-text fragments in purple by default, instead of the usual yellow highlight. This can appear for some Knowledge Panels, free product listing article snippets, Featured Snippets, and more.