Snippet means a small piece of information, usually out of a larger one but not necessarily. Similarly, Featured Snippets on the search engine, specifically Google, is a piece of information given to a user in return for a highly specified search.
The brief summary of a topic (extracted from the larger main content) sometimes you are presented with when you search for a hot topic or is what the Featured Snippet. There are only three forms of snippets; tables, paragraphs, and lists with an 82 % chance in every result that you will get a paragraph snippet.
Thus making it the most common among all the three. Some websites are so expert in the art of SEO that they know exactly what the users search for when they open their search engines. The featured snippets we see on top of a Google search result are an example of high-level use of SEO tools and techniques.
According to numerous researches, you have a higher chance of appearing on top as a Featured Snippet if you are consistent in the top 10 ranking in SEO and if your content is related to the topics of finance, mathematics, health, Do it Yourself (DIY), etc.
There is another thing that will be helpful in featuring you on top; Niche Keywords. If you have not noticed already, then we need to tell you that the featured snippets are most of the time a result of Niche keyword searches.
Only when the search is highly specified, Google can identify exactly the topic a user is trying to search and only if it is 100 % sure of it, is decide to save their time by providing them also a brief and fitting description of it.
At this point, another factor comes into the equation, the quality of your content. Google will not simply put you on the snippet if your content is related to the topic but it also needs to be the most accurate and easily understandable as well.
The above factors automatically give us an answer as to how the Featured Snippets Impact the SEO. Google choosing you as the featured snippet is the ultimate example that the content you have published is approved by them as the most insightful and useful for the users trying to learn about it. in a way, it is a certified piece of information trusted the most by Google.