Google’s altering of video search rules will affect many websites

Using video technology for business. Inage (C) Tim Sandle

Earlier in December 2023, Google made changes to their video guidelines. With this, the technology company has updated its search results to require that videos be the main or primary content on a webpage to be displayed in video mode.

This extends the previous change made in April 2023, where video thumbnails were excluded from search results if the video was not the main part of the page’s content. Even in video mode, videos will now only appear if they are the central focus of the page, not as supplementary material. This change aims to ensure that videos are prominently featured on pages for better user experience.

Having the video as the main part of the content means that when users click on a search result in video mode, they will be directed to a page where the video is the primary focus. In this context, a video is considered the main content when it is prominently positioned on the page, preferably above the fold, and the primary purpose of the page is to allow users to watch that specific video.

This update aims to ensure that users are directed to pages where the video is a central and significant element of the content.

Consequently, some users may see reduced video impressions in the performance report, video indexing report, and video rich results report in the Google Search Console.

In response to this change, some website owners and publishers have expressed dismay and frustration with the “Video is not the main content of the page” error that now seems to appear more frequently in the Google Search Console.

Examples of non-eligible pages include:

• Blog posts where the video complements the text rather than being the primary content.
• Product details pages with supplementary videos.
• Video category pages listing multiple equally prominent videos.

Google informed users about this change on the data anomalies page, noting a decrease in the number of pages with indexed videos on November 30, 2023.

Taylor Kurtz, a consultant for UNMiss, tells Digital Journal that these changes are not an improvement: “By removing videos from search results, Google is making it harder for websites to attract visitors and generate revenue. This change will also make it more difficult for digital marketers to optimize their content for search engines, as they will need to ensure that videos are the main or primary content on the page to be shown in video mode.”

In terms of the impact on some businesses, Kurtz finds: “This could lead to a decrease in the number of videos produced by digital marketers, which would be a loss for the industry as a whole. Overall, this change is a significant challenge for digital marketers, and it will require adjusted strategies to ensure that they continue to attract visitors and generate revenue.”