At SEJ Summit Santa Monica earlier this year, Maile Ohye from Google was asked about featured snippets.  She mentioned that a good example of content seen in featured snippets at the top of the search results was Q&A type of content where the site is providing information and answers about the topic.

This isn’t new – Google has long said that site owners should make sure content is answering the questions that visitors expect, especially when the title heavily implies that the answer will be found.

Ohye was then asked about whether making all content into a Q&A format was the best option, especially for something with technical info, and if that was what Google is looking for.  Since Google tends to show a lot of featured snippets for content that does answer questions, it does make sense that perhaps site owners should create content specifically in that format, to increase the odds of featured snippets being displayed from the site.

No, no.  Not necessarily.  We have different ways of extracting it, so its not that you need to make everything in Q&A format.

This is true.  In Google’s Quality Rater Guidelines, they talk about how not all queries ask a specific question but rather have an implied question.  For example, someone searching for “Daniel Radcliffe’s height” are really wanting to know “how tall is Daniel Radcliffe”, even though the first query doesn’t explicitly state the question, but rather implies it.  Likewise, content can be created this same way, with the content merely implying the question, without it explicitly stated on the page.  And Google does the same for choosing featured snippets.

If you are looking to earn more featured snippets for your site, you can follow Google’s advice.

Bottom line, don’t turn all your content into a Q&A format, unless your site actually is a Q&A type of site like Quora or a forum type site like Stack Overflow.  Just make sure your content is high quality and it answers the question or contains the information the searcher is seeking when they land on your page.