Google Revises “Video Mode” Guidelines, Highlighting the Video’s Central Role on the Webpage

Here is some big news for webmasters and content creators. Google has recently revised its “Video mode” guidelines, focusing more on the central role videos play on web pages. It means optimizing your videos for search engines is now more important than ever. This update from Google is sure to impact how websites present information and users consume it, concentrating on the increasing power of video on the web.

What is Video Mode?

The videos you see under the video tab are usually considered Video mode. Google provided an example of Video mode in the Google Search results.

Moreover, Google has given some examples of web pages where video is not the primary focus, like:

• A blog post where the video serves as a supplement to the text rather than being the main focus of the page
• A product details page with a complementary video
• A video category page displaying multiple videos with equal importance.

What’s New?

Google stated “We made a change to only show video thumbnails next to results on the main Google Search results page when the video is the main content of a page. And we’re extending this change to search results in Video mode to better connect users with the video content they’re looking for. This change will start rolling out today, and it could take up to a week to complete”

Further, Google explained that now clicking a result in Video mode, will lead you to a page where the main content is a video.

Search Control Updates

Google stated that this change might affect your video reports in Google Search Console. The impact of this change will be visible in the Search Console video indexing report. Videos that are not the primary content of the page will be labeled as “No video indexed” in the Search Console.

“Since these videos will no longer be shown in Video mode, you can expect to see a decrease in the number of pages with indexed videos. This decrease will also appear in the number of video impressions in the performance report, video indexing report, and the video rich results report in Search Console”, Google reported.

Google is introducing a new reason in the report to clarify why certain videos are not indexed: “Video is not the main content of the page.” It simplifies the report by replacing the previous issues which include – Invalid Video URLs, Unsupported video format, Unknown video support, Inline data URLs that cannot be used for video URLs, Video outside the viewport, Video too small, Video too tall, etc.

What Does it Bring for Website Owners and Content Creators?

Google’s “Video mode” update prioritizes video-centric pages which leads users directly to videos instead of general web pages. Videos that are not in the main content will be labeled “No video indexed” and won’t appear in Video mode, impacting video reports like indexing and impressions. Therefore, you have to keep an eye on the performance of pages, if your pages have been ranking in video mode within Google Search. Moreover, the change will also impact the video metrics reported in the Search Console.