Featured snippets are summaries or answers to user search queries that appear in a highlighted box at the top of Google's search results. They aim to directly answer the user's question without requiring them to click a search result. Google introduces featured snippets in 2014 and selects responses from pages it identifies as providing especially relevant information to the query. Rich snippets that include additional structured data like lists, tables, or facts help search engines better understand a page and increase the likelihood of it being featured in response to a query.