Many of us spend a lot of time on Google trying to get the right results to come up, and sometimes you don’t find exactly what you were hoping for. On the whole, though, Google is pretty good at directing us towards the right kind of content. If we’ve chosen to search for “Video”, our search results should be showing us video content, right?
Strangely enough, wrong.
What’s Google’s problem?
Google has been messing up its results recently when users use its Video Search function and directing users to pages that don’t seem to contain any video at all. In case you’re not familiar, Google allows you to select ‘Video’ when you run a search the same way you would normally select ‘Web’ or Images’. This option lists results from Google’s own YouTube, but also turns up choices from other video giants and any other relevant websites. Sometimes you’ll even see these results pop up when you run a standard web search, if the search engine decides you’re probably better off watching a video to find your answer. You can recognise these entries instantly as they’ll have a thumbnail featuring a ‘Play’ button in the corner.
But when you come to click on these thumbnails, you may find the page you’re taken to doesn’t even contain a video. Sometimes these pages have references to media content in the source code that are evidently fooling the search engine, but there are no animations to be seen anywhere. Other times you might discover the video lurking in a hidden menu after a lot of investigation, but often it’s simply non-existent. This can be a bit frustrating, especially after being presented with a misleading graphic promising a media clip.
How important is video for digital marketing?
Despite being called out publicly for this fairly easy-to-find error, Google has claimed it won’t be announcing any changes regarding the way it lists this content. For the time being, if you’re looking for videos to help explain something more clearly or simply for entertainment, you might be better off using YouTube or another platform that will actually pull up the type of posts you’re looking for. Google obviously isn’t prioritising user experience when it comes to video search, but we think they’re missing out on something crucial.
In fact, this issue reminds us of something else. Namely, there is still a lack of video content on the Internet, and it’s often nowhere to be found even when it seems like a glaringly obvious omission. Despite that, we’ve seen plenty of evidence to suggest this is changing fast. Video is by far the fastest growing digital marketing channel, as it’s becoming increasingly compatible with social media and mobile devices and is proven to be the most engaging form of content. This is logical when you think about it – why expect your potential customers to read a page of plain text when you could be grabbing their attention with dynamic visuals and sound?
Affordable video marketing that boosts your SEO
At 123 Ranking we’re doing what we do best by keeping our customers up to date with the latest SEO techniques, and that includes getting on top of the ongoing explosion in video marketing. We’ve been producing promotional videos for our clients for years, and we can create one for your business too, down to the finest details.
Our affordable promotional video package isn’t just for building quality engagement with users, but it ties into your overall SEO strategy by creating another great back-link that’s optimised and linked back to your website. Simply get in touch to find out how we can help you catch up with this exciting movement – you can give us a call on 0333 320 8099 or send us a message here.
