Forum Moderators: Robert Charlton & goodroi
So many people find reading difficult - especially online but even otherwise - that I'm pretty sure we'll see a push to more video results in the near future. As long as the end users click and watch, it will keep increasing.
Someone at Pubcon made the statement that, in the near future, sites that don't have video may find themselves losing ranking pretty fast to sites that do.
I'm pretty skeptical about that, because I can't see Google turning Web Search into Video Search.
Of course, if a video is displayed prominently on a Universal Search results page, that's going to benefit the site that has the video (e.g., YouTube). But I wouldn't expect the first page of search results to become a series of video clips, with Wikipedia, Coca-Cola.com, or a top-ranked page at Mysite.com being relegated to page 2 or beyond.
This question goes a bit further, as I read it. In other words, will the presence of video somewhere on the site become a ranking "plus". I don't think that will happen directly, but in many markets it will happen indirectly, since many users tend to prefer this more passive kind of content in contrast to the active effort needed to read. That preference starts to translate into more backlinks, more navigational searches and so on.
I believed it when they said that, but it's going to take time. When it is trialled though, the fallout (and the meteoric rise) is going to be phenomenal. A complete readjustment for all. But at the moment, there aren't enough videos out there. Videojug is one which will earn a fortune when it happens.
Will Google like the fact that your site is mentioned on a video? This video is not on your site but on a video sharing site such as Youtube?
Video Sharing sites are just the begining and a good outlet for grassroots guys that cant afford to pay for the bandwith. How google will weigh youtube videos vs. the increasing amount internal video is hard to say because the majority of the videos in universal search are youtube videos.
Text results are just text while video results get a nice big image next to them so the user has no choice but to look. I want a picture of my website next to my result if I have to compete with video results. Only seems fair.
This just sounds like another bull**** algo from google.
People want to watch video's of Britney Spears shaving her hear off rather than reading about it but any commercial aspect of search I see absolutely no evidence of people prefering videos to content. Frankly google are lying if they say otherwise.
Google search is still looking for the right balance of video in the SERPs - and that balance MUST increasingly be query specific. One SERP I watch regularly just switched from a books listing in the universal search spot to a video listing - and in this case, I'm pretty sure the video is better for the end user and will draw many more clicks.
Going back on discussions from a couple of years ago, members had speculated that toolbar data can be used to figure out how much time people are spending on a page or a site. Video is content that increases that time significantly.
Blendtec is a brilliant example of how a good viral video strategy can work wonders for the brand and SEO. It even increases the number of links to your site, so if you take into account two sites selling blenders, guess which site will rank better, eventually...
At the end of the day, dwell time is a metric which is used in a lot of non SEO areas like advertising sales and every second spent on your site is a second the surfer will not spend on your competitors site.
So even if its not used in the search algos, it is a good thing to try and increase it.
"...sites that don't have video may find themselves losing ranking pretty fast to sites that do."
That's quite a hypothesis, and worthy of discussion. We've already beaten up the whole universal search thing here many times over.
It is possible that if your site is in a niche where video is useful, then those who have video will do better and better. However, I cannot see why Google would ever make it a direct metric in the ranking algo. Instead each type of content will prove itself, or not, over time and the current algo handles that metric rather well. Adding in a "has video" metric for ranking would make no sense to me.
However, I can envision a future where there is a "has video" icon by any url that does.
With "universal/blended search" becoming more and more the norm, it would only seem logical to optimise for video and any other non text-based content for that matter.
Another note to add here, ensuring your client is present in all mediums allows you to conquer more serp space for branded searches (a smart move from a reputation management pov).
[edited by: petra at 9:56 am (utc) on Nov. 20, 2008]
Oops. I misread it completely. No clue why I thought it was about using video on pages and sites would help them rank better.
I'd say because it's not always a trivial/cheap thing to do. Definitely not a trivial/cheap thing to do well in a way that would actually get good results. If you have limited time and/or resources, then you have to ask yourself whether it's really necessary. In most cases, putting the time and money towards traditional SEO,PPC,Display advertising. etc is likely to yield better results for your cash.
p.s.
It seems it would be more 'fair' if Google ALSO included a link to the video poster's site in the SERPs if they're going to include the video.
Seems like a potentially simplistic response ("sites that use 'video" as a generic term), to what can be a very creative and variable type of media.
Scary thought - could anyone afford to sue for alteration of content?
Google doesn't even know what's on these worthless videos, but is putting them in the top 10 anyway, pushing legitimate sites off the first page.
I am seeing more and more worthless Youtube videos in the top 10 SERPs everyday. Usually it's a pair of them together. So many pairs can't be occurring together naturally, so it's an artificial manipulation of the SERPs.
Google doesn't even know what's on these worthless videos, but is putting them in the top 10 anyway, pushing legitimate sites off the first page.
if you see worthless videos in your sector of search then make one thats not worthless and profit.
I've had the same problems with video displacement.
To the general points of video I'm the biggest sceptic. Video ads were going to revolutionize the web. Never happened, just annoyed people more. YouTube sold for a billion bucks but Google still hasn't monetized it.
Google will have to sell YouTube sooner or later (however long their shareholders will tolerate the bleeding). Then we'll go back to clean, uncluttered Search Results Pages.
Google's plans to monetize YouTube are no better than the Detroit 3's ideas to turn their business around.
Embedded video results in main pages are an insult to the users' intelligence. "They can see the Video link at the top of the page next to Images and News but they aren't smart enough to click on it."
p/g
I embedded three videos yesterday, two as part of blog posts, one that illustrated the exact topic of a page I'd written sometime in the 90's.
If/when I see anything worthy of an opinion, I'll be sure to add my views.
