Google and video: analysis on Search presence and other news coming soon
It is a trend that has been going on for a long time, and that we have also highlighted in our study on the features that appear among Google organic results (and that subtract more and more space to links): on the search engine there is an increasing presence of video carousels, prominent places to invite and encourage users to click. An American analysis has deepened the composition of these carousels and confirmed the total dominance of YouTube as preferred platform: here are all the numbers and news coming for Google videos.
Videos among Google SERPs, YouTube still dominates
The search was conducted by John Shehata and is based on the analysis of Google News and Google mobile SERPs in the United States for millions of URLs in 2020.
In summary, it emerges that YouTube is the main publisher in Google News, where 11% of the total content comes from the video platform, with a visibility of the content is equal to 8.07% of all Google News content.
It is almost a monopoly on mobile SERPs, where 85% of all video links for news and trending keywords are Youtube videos, while content from social platforms – especially Facebook and Twitter – together account for 2.5% of total video links.
The importance of the videos
In the era of what has been called attention economy, the production of video “is one of the most important flows to which every publisher should pay attention”, also to generate revenue and monetize from different channels, explains the author of the research.
For many, however, it is difficult to succeed in making their content to stand out for a number of factors, such as a high CPM and higher than the display ads, to which is also added this predominance of other Google products, such as Youtube.
However, the visibility of video content in Google News and Google’s Serps still offers several opportunities for the publisher to take advantage of.
The study about videos in Google News
We know that Google News hosts content from thousands of publishers in the United States and around the world and there are many operators in the industry who strive to be included and optimize their news sites for this channel.
Appearing in Google News is indeed an indication of authority – although now there is no longer a subscription request to do, but it is the platform that automatically selects sources from the Web – although the real traffic comes rather from Google Top Stories, the feature that highlights in SERP the “news in evidence”.
According to Shehata, however, “an optimized news site can drive nearly 3% of total traffic from Google News”.
YouTube is the main editor in Google News
The main competitor of all publishers in Google News, however, is YouTube, from which derives about 11% of all the content of the Big G news channel.
The study classified Google News articles into 2 distinct types based on their appearance: Major stories and sub-stories. Google News consists of news tabs, each news tab has 1 main story and up to 4 secondary stories; the main stories are visible and get most of the traffic, while the secondary stories are mostly hidden and receive little traffic.
Well, 78% of all Youtube links appear as main stories in Google News.
On average, a major Youtube story remains in Google News for 137 minutes compared to the 186 minutes of the main story not on Youtube, while a secondary Youtube story remains in Google News for 413 minutes compared to the 507 minutes for the secondary story not on Youtube.
YouTube is the main publisher of Google News not only for number of appearances, but also for visibility, gaining more than 8.07% of the total visibility of Google News content.
Content visibility has been measured by multiple factors (ranking, main or secondary history, duration in Google News, visible vs hidden and more), and is a strong leverage of the CTR.
To have a comparison (and understand the weight of Youtube), just think that the CNN content, the second most visible publisher in the United States, constitutes 2.71% of the total of Google News in the United States and have 4.71% of visibility of the content. In other words, YouTube content has appeared 5 times more than the second publisher on the chart and has almost twice as much visibility.
The most present YouTube channels on Google
The research has also deepened which are the YouTube channels that get the highest visibility on Google News: in first place there is ESPN (sports television broadcaster) with 7.3% of visibility, followed by IGN (video games and entertainment media) with 6.8% and NBC Sports (another channel dedicated only to sport).
It is the sports news section that plays the lion’s share of visibility on Youtube, as 32% of all the visibility of Youtube content is focused on sport.
How to associate your YouTube channel to Google News
The logical step “after reading all the statistics is to invest in video”, especially if you are a consolidated news publisher but you have a weak presence in Google News Youtube videos. Shehata also explains how you can easily connect a YouTube channel to Google News in five steps:
- Access the Centro editori
- Click on the “Content” tab.
- Click on New section.
- In the pop-up window, add the Youtube URL, name and other details.
- Join the YouTube Partner Program. Youtube partners enjoy many benefits that may be useful for the site (as explained by this guide)
The analysis of video presence among SERPs
Shehata then went on to analyze “millions of trending keyword rankings”, estimating that 14.46% of total organic results (excluding Top Stories) are video content, with 11.95% content visibility (calculated on the basis of factors such as average ranking, average ranking within the carousel, duration of the ranking etc.).
The video carousels are available in different shapes and sizes, ranging from 2 to over 12 videos in one block, available in horizontal previews or in a list of links. The 3 most popular formats are:
- List of 3 links – 66,02% of the time
- List of 4 links – 19,79% of the time
- Carousel of 10 links – 7,10% of the times
In general, almost 14% of the total organic results of Trend-Keywords are video content.
YouTube dominates among SERPs, too, but there is still room for socials
Youtube videos account for 84.59% of all video links in Serps for news and trending keywords; the second place in terms of video presence in Carousels belongs to CNN (2.10%), followed by Facebook (1.07%) and then Twitter (1.39% including mobile.twitter.com and twitter.com).
The presence of Facebook and Twitter – which together account for 2.5% of the videos in the Caroselli – should encourage publishers to consider the publication of videos on these social platforms as part of their strategy, to increase the chances of attracting organic traffic from Google Serps with videos.
Among the most present Youtube channels, Facebook pages and Twitter accounts in the carousel video there are especially those that deal with sports: ESPN is at the top among the Youtube channels also in the SERP, Seton Hall Pirates (which brings together the teams of Seton Hall University) is the main page between the videos taken by Facebook and Chelsea FC is at the top of the Twitter videos (and in second place, curiously, there is the official twitter account of the Società Sportiva Calcio Napoli (@en_sscnapoli).
Work’s methodology
The author also explained the methodology of his work, based on a dataset of “2 million URLs in Google News and 200,000 mobile searches in Google Serps that generated 3.2 million Urls (excluding Top Stories) in Google Serps”.
The analysis focused on two main metrics – Content visibility and URL sharing” – and focused “mainly on the main destination pages (home page, sport, business, entertainment, national news, world, technology, science and health)”, while “in the Google Mobile Serps we traced hundreds of thousands of Trend/ News keywords in Google analyzing the first page”.
Our keyword searches are all made up of trends and news keywords generated from multiple sources such as Google Trends and classified into trending categories. These searches for mobile devices are not a constant list of keywords, they change continuously according to news and trends at that time.
Obviously, Shehata said in conclusion, “the sample does not represent the real universe since there are trillions of searches that take place every year according to Google” and is therefore “just a small set that represents the main trends in the United States“.
New opportunities for videomakers?
If it seems difficult to undermine the dominance of YouTube (which has a perhaps inevitable preferential lane in both Google News and Carousel Video), there may be interesting opportunities, even on other surfaces of the Google ecosystem, for those who produces short videos.
These contents are in fact shown for some time now on Google Discover – the feed of Big G for mobile devices, customized according to the reading preferences and browsing history of the individual user – but have also been reported as a new mobile SERP carousel (image from seroundtable.com).
When you click on a short video, the user is directed to the web version of the social platform and not to the native mobile app (even if it is installed on the device), and to go back to Google search results just click on the arrow.
The interesting thing is that these short videos – short videos – are taken almost exclusively from social platforms such as Tiktok and Instagram and, at least according to random tests, there are no videos from Youtube (at least for now).
This indexing of short videos allows Google to open up even more to social media and to gain even more traffic (as it suggests the choice not to redirect the user to apps external to the browser)but it also offers new opportunities for manufacturers and publishers, who have an extra feature to look for visibility on the search engine.
