Bookmark Vlog Blog
Sep
8
Ever wondered how you can get your video or vlog to appear in regular search results? Matt Cutts, the main representative “face” of Google for webmasters, has recently provided some keys.
Summarizing a session he and other representatives from the major search engine participated in at the recent Search Engine Strategies conference, he gives the following tips:
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1. Make sure it’s on the larger video sharing sites such as YouTube.
2. Submit your video directly to the search engines. (I would also think that submitting to places like Google Video and Yahoo Video would help.)
In order to optimize you video for search engines (i.e. make it easier for search engines to identify it and pick it up in their search results), the panel recommended the following:
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1. Make sure the title of your video reflects the content well.
2. Explore “Media RSS” .
3. “Make a kick-ass video.” (This, for those who don’t know, means that it will be more likely to attract links, which is what search engines like most.)
If you have a larger video site (i.e. more than a personal vlog site), and you would like your videos to be indexed, the following was recommended:
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1. Make sure your videos play reliably.
2. Make sure there are no copyright issues.
3. Make sure there is no porn, etc.
The Current Problem Search Engines Have with Video
The difficulty search engines have with indexing video, of course, is that there is usually little text associated the video to tell the search engines what the content is about in an in-depth way. When someone at the conference asked the panel if the engines were working on ways to extract text from audio and video, Matt reports the following:
Everyone was silent for a while. David Bailey of Google gave the only reasonable answer that most search engine employees can give when you ask about future plans: we have researchers that work on such projects, but we have nothing to announce at this time.
Who knows how long it will be before someone has something to “announce,” but the good news is that it’s being worked on. In the end that will mean it will be easier for videos to be picked up by the engines and returned in their search results.
Blended Search / Universal Search
The larger context in which all these remarks were made was in a discussion about “blended search” (or “universal search” as Google calls it). Blended search means that when you search for something, the engines return all sorts of content: video, text, photos, blogs, news, etc. As you may have noticed, the trend towards blended search has been gaining momentum for a while now.
While vloggers may have somewhat of a disadvantage at the moment in terms getting their content represented in search results, it’s looking like the playing field is slowly beginning to level out. Therefore, the best advice from all of the above is to simply “make a kick-ass video.”
LINKS:
Search Engine Strategies Conference