TubularInsights (fka ReelSEO) - Latest Comments in New Google Universal Search Video Thumbnail Tests

Re: New Google Universal Search Video Thumbnail Tests

Mark Robertson — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 12:14:58 -0000

Hey There Carl. It has to do with setting up a google video sitemap and telling google where the thumbnail is located. Then, with backlinks to the video or a strong enough page authority (page rank), the thumbnails will show.

Re: New Google Universal Search Video Thumbnail Tests

Carl — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 08:36:32 -0000

mmm It seems everyone talks "about" this feature, but I am wondering how you can do it..or is it something we have no control over?

So how do sites like metacafe etc do it? I did see on otheir site the meta tag

Does this have anything to do with it?

Thanks

Carl

Re: New Google Universal Search Video Thumbnail Tests

Andy G — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 07:01:54 -0000

Thumbnails attract more eyes than pay-per click. I find myself always paying attention to the videos more than anything else. The thumnails are a plus when launching video!

www.videoseo.blogspot.com

Re: New Google Universal Search Video Thumbnail Tests

Eugene — Fri, 05 Sep 2008 04:02:51 -0000

The following looks like common sense (how I would do it):
1. The reason why Google is giving more preference to the videos now is because Google wants to make that super-high video content growth even higher.
In particular, giving preference to video results and especially YouTube is a huge stimulation for content producers to produce even more content (i.e. Google is trying to fill-up YouTube with content faster).
2. Once they reach the threshold (presumably measured in the number of videos although it might not be as simple as that), they will not give preference to videos anymore and the video SE positions will be calculated just like they are for other text content (thanks to Annotations, Captions/Subtitles and Speech Recognition, the same mathematical formulas that are used for text will be able to be applied to calculate the SE position).
This of course means that if the video has enough weight behind it, it will make it to the #1 position on the search results page.

Re: New Google Universal Search Video Thumbnail Tests

Mark Robertson — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 04:26:35 -0000

Totally agree that sooner or later video may not have an advantage in terms on SERP rankings. Such an interesting discussion because video content is predicted to grow tremendously and if the content is there, and is being requested, and it is relevant.......

Just thinking that perhaps the test above with only 2 results may not be enough video to show...

Interesting on yout first point regarding adsense and the UI draws more attention to those ads on the right. Only problem is that it somewhat takes eyes off the ads at the top as well.. ?? I'm no design expert but your point certainly sounds plausible, at least as an ancillary benefit for Google.

Re: New Google Universal Search Video Thumbnail Tests

Eugene — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 03:59:06 -0000

And by the way...
the sad truth is, the above experiments show that sooner or later we may discover that Google has finished testing and does not give preference to the video results anymore.
Let's use the opportunity while it's here!

Re: New Google Universal Search Video Thumbnail Tests

Eugene — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 03:53:53 -0000

Adding extra thumbnails horizontally brings the eyes of the user closer to AdWords. I guess Google is trying to see if they can increase clickthrough like this.

Re: New Google Universal Search Video Thumbnail Tests

Andy G — Sat, 30 Aug 2008 10:36:33 -0000

We discovered video seo more than a year ago because of this! People prefer to have their video thumbnails appear....more than being ranked 1st on 1st. In my opinion it grabs attention more than pay per click. By the way....I love this website..... we have been waiting for something like Reelseo.com for a while. We felt alone with the whole video seo thing. Now we have a great resource to collectively share information!