Ten past one and Mariam cannot sleep. She picks her phone up and types in a question. How many laser sessions for acne scars.
Google returns with a box at the top of the search results, a sentence lifted from a clinic’s website. She taps it. The page opens halfway down, in the FAQs and the sentence is waiting for her, painted in yellow.
Most patients see dramatic results in just three sessions.
She books the first one and puts the phone down.
Since 2020, when you tap a featured snippet, Google carries you to the exact passage it quoted, and highlights it. The clinic did nothing to ask for this, the reader simply arrives in the middle.
This is the page Mariam landed on, as it was first written.
Say goodbye to acne scars. Our advanced laser delivers visible results in just three sessions, with zero downtime. Glow up and get back to your life.
At the bottom, under Frequently Asked Questions.
How many sessions will I need? Most patients see dramatic results in just three sessions.
Is there any downtime? None. You can return to work the same day.
A year passes, and someone careful reads the top. A medical director with a red pen in hand, or a new marketing hire. They know scars are stubborn, that they answer differently in different skin, and three sessions aren’t anything anybody can promise. So they rewrite the top.
Results vary from patient to patient. The number of sessions required, and any recovery time, will be determined at consultation.
True and manufactured and dead. A sentence a doubter can smell a mile away. A sentence that does not get the clinic sued.
I rewrote it the way I write.
Some scars soften after three sessions. Some need six, and a few never fully go. Your skin will be red for a couple of days, sometimes longer. Do not book the Friday before an event. At your first appointment, the doctor looks at your scars under a strong light and tells you how many sessions yours will need. That number may be higher than you hoped.
Mine is the one she would trust.
Back at the original page, nobody scrolled down.
The FAQ still promises three sessions with no downtime. The page speaks in two voices, and Mariam, excited and sleepy that night, read only the one Google painted yellow. She books thinking three. She now sits in the waiting room on the fourth session. Her face is red, her manager thinks she has got sunburn.
Pages do not get read from the top anymore, search drops the reader in at the answer to her question. In her case, the answers sat in FAQs. FAQs are written last, usually in different sittings and by different hands, with Google’s crawler in mind. They are short and certain, which makes it easy for Google to quote.
When two parts of a page disagree, the louder one comes back to haunt you.
A revision that stops at the first scroll is only half a revision.
I worked on a page like this. Dermatology clinic, new director, “make the service pages sound like we understand our customers, make them less salesy, thanks.”
I did not start at the top, I opened the FAQs and read upwards. I wrote down every number I saw. Three sessions. Six sessions. Zero downtime. Two days of redness. The pages contradicted themselves time and time again. It was a trend.
Fix the bottom first. By the time you reach the top, the page promises nothing brave.
A page with two numbers disagreeing loses both of the numbers. It loses its superlatives too. A reader who does notice would think the same way. She would not write to tell you, she will close the tab and she will do it fast.
Read your own page the way she will. Search your own question. Tap your own snippet. Start where Google starts and read upward. Every number on the page says the same thing wherever it appears, or it comes out.
The careful sentence is still there, at the top, where nobody starts.
I write long form and patient pages for healthcare companies, from the first heading to the last question.