Position Zero

Position zero is the informal name for a featured snippet: the box above the first ordinary result on a Google results page, showing an answer lifted from one page with the link beneath it. The name comes from its place above position one.

How a page gets there

There is no markup for it. Google’s documentation says its systems decide whether a page would make a good featured snippet for a query and, if so, elevate it. The box is a passage from a page Google already returns for the query, chosen because it answers the question in one place. The same boxes also appear inside the related-questions group on a results page.

How to stay out

Three controls, all documented by Google. A nosnippet rule removes the page from snippets of every kind. A max-snippet rule set to a short length makes a featured snippet less likely, and the shorter the setting the less likely it is. A data-nosnippet attribute on an element keeps that element’s text out of any snippet while leaving the rest of the page eligible.

Position zero and a generated answer

A featured snippet quotes one page verbatim and links it. An AI Overview, or an assistant’s answer, is written from several pages and may name some of them, all of them or none. The property that earned position zero, a self-contained passage that answers a question, is the property an assistant looks for too; the difference is that the assistant chooses among many such passages and writes its own sentence around them. Google’s featured-snippet documentation does not describe how the two relate, so that is a description of the mechanism, not of a documented rule.

A common question

How does a page opt out of being shown as a featured snippet?

Three controls do it, and none of them is markup that asks for the box in the first place, since there is no such markup. A nosnippet rule takes the page out of snippets of every kind. A max-snippet rule set to a short length makes a featured snippet less likely, and the shorter the setting the less likely it becomes. A data-nosnippet attribute on an element keeps that element's text out of any snippet while the rest of the page stays eligible.

Sources

Selection and opt-out controls: Google Search Central, featured snippets.