This may not be new, but i've just noticed "Your browser can't play this video" appearing in Google SERPs for YouTube videos.
Wilburforce
10:08 am on Apr 21, 2023 (gmt 0)
Which browser(s)?
engine
10:14 am on Apr 21, 2023 (gmt 0)
Interesting, it's now disappeared. It was in the SERPs
Added, it was FF I was using.
[edited by: engine at 10:20 am (utc) on Apr 21, 2023]
Wilburforce
11:18 am on Apr 21, 2023 (gmt 0)
FF has just updated (v 112.0.1). A glitch?
lucy24
5:27 pm on Apr 21, 2023 (gmt 0)
Heh. I thought you meant the SERP was showing the response the Googlebot received on its last crawl. This has definitely been known to happen in other contexts.
engine
9:30 am on Apr 22, 2023 (gmt 0)
That's what I was seeing, lucy24, and because it was Google's SERPs and YouTube I thought it was rather odd.
lucy24
5:33 pm on Apr 22, 2023 (gmt 0)
Conclusion: Some part of G###'s algorithm was programmed by the same people who once caused my ISP to identify its own mail as kill-on-sight spam. (More than a little inconvenient when you are waiting for them to send you a password reset and it never arrives.)
jimji
12:25 am on Apr 24, 2023 (gmt 0)
Not meaning to go off-topic, but I would sure be interested to know how you got around that "kill-on-sight" trouble, lucy24. Did you start a thread on that?
lucy24
6:09 am on Apr 24, 2023 (gmt 0)
<topic drift> Mercifully, the password that had packed up and disappeared from my brain reappeared a few days later. But no, this particular email handler at this particular ISP offers no way for the user to go into Webmail and select some piece of mail--or make some general rule--to say This Is Not Spam. Years later <further td> a change from pop to imap--or was it the other way around?--resulted in ALL mail, no matter how blatantly junky, being passed along to my computer. So now I have to deal with it all, whether I like it or not. </td>
Anyway, I think we've exhausted the theme of G### failing to realize that there is more than one way for what the Googlebot sees to differ from what a human sees. Call it inverse cloaking, whether intentional or otherwise.
tangor
1:40 pm on Apr 24, 2023 (gmt 0)
Heh ... I had the "your browser can't play this video" happen while I WAS playing the video ... but was suffering buffer glitches--not sure which side, mine or theirs. So I stopped playing it and downloaded instead. Works a treat. :)
tangor
2:47 am on Apr 25, 2023 (gmt 0)
Further research shows the video was super-sized (2.9 GB, 1280 wide). Site was throttled down, thus couldn't feed fast enough to view on line. Worked fine in a media player after a download, but worked EQUALLY WELL when I optimized it to 640 w at 188.4 MB! (one hour, 28 minutes). Just for fun also made a 480 w to 133.2 MB just to see the difference (not much at full screen)
If it wasn't for the site throttle (2.9mbs) it would have worked fine with a 100mb pipe on my side. Sheesh! A little forethought on the poster's side would avoid problems like this.
