Anyone who is savvy with their website will know that Google Analytics and Google Search Console can provide a wealth of data about their website. This is designed to allow webmasters the opportunity to track their sites evolution and make changes and adaptations based on real time, real occurring data, trends and behaviours. Video results are one such new way that this can be done, and our latest blog post will take a closer look at this.
Why videos?
The inclusion of videos on websites is becoming more and more popular. Videos are an ideal way to break up dense and heavy text which can often be hard to read and difficult to concentrate on. Videos are shown to be much better at providing descriptive information, as well as adding a human touch to the site. In addition to this, videos just look better from a feature point of view, because they show audiences that webmasters have put thought and effort into their website and catered for everyone.
What is happening?
It has been a few months ago now that Google have been in the process of testing a new video indexing report. It now appears that they have been happy with that test phase, and it will now be rolled out to all. The roll out will only be slow and not immediate so it is expected to take time. Some people will notice its inclusion quite quickly, whilst for others, they won’t notice anything different for a while.
What will the report actually show?
The report is designed to show how many videos on your site that contain any indexed pages. The idea behind this is to allow users to see just how well their videos are doing, giving them a better idea of whether there is any need for improvement or adjustment. If a user does have videos on the site and the crawl picks up on them, results in Google Search Console will be shown on the left-hand side in the navigation section. If you do not see this, it is because no videos have been detected (or perhaps the roll out hasn’t reached you yet, because it will be slow as already mentioned!)
What can a webmaster tangibly do with the data presented?
Many of you who are not experts in digital marketing might actually see data and results displayed, but not actually know what it means. This is where we try and make it a bit easier for you!
According to Google, any data displayed on video results is designed so a webmaster can easily see how many pages Google has spotted that contain videos, whether there were problems indexing those pages and if there were, what were any issues from stopping the indexing. If there are issues to solve and fixes on videos to be done, this can be achieved through the Search Console platform also, with tracking available to see the status on any fix. Google have also adapted their URL inspection tool to allow users to check indexing of pages containing videos as well.
Since videos are becoming a mainstay as we said at the outset, it would make sense that webmasters would want as many of these successfully indexed as possible. Being able to easily see if this has been done, along with steps available to fix any problems can only be seen as a good thing, and this is an opportunity to at least keep up the fight against your competitors.
Videos are a good way of bringing greater conversions to a website. To find out more on conversion optimisation click our dedicated link.