Updated as of May 16, 2023
For those who depend on video marketing—indeed, for those who haven’t yet embraced it—the introduction of Google Search Console’s new video indexing report represents a pivotal development. If you’re not leveraging video content, it’s high time to reconsider.
In July 2022, Google unveiled this innovative report, which delineates the indexed status of videos on your website—thus, their discoverability in search results. Historically, website owners were left in the dark regarding video indexing, complicating efforts to attribute organic growth to video content or to enhance their organic search performance.
As of August 2022, Google Search Console’s video indexing report is accessible to all sites. Read on to uncover the myriad benefits of this tool and discover how to harness it effectively.
A primary motivation for utilizing the GSC video indexing report stems from the explosive growth of video marketing. Since 2018, the time individuals spend watching online videos has doubled, with an average weekly consumption of 323 minutes in the U.S. alone, predominantly on mobile devices. A compelling introduction, tutorial, or product video can captivate and retain user interest.
Recognizing this trend, Google has escalated the role of video content in its search result pages (SERPs), complementing the launch of the GSC video indexing report. The search engine frequently showcases video carousels and rich snippets, enriching the user experience. Notably, this differs from a YouTube playlist featured in the Knowledge Panel, as video snippets link directly to your website.
The SERP on the left embeds a YouTube video in the Knowledge Panel. The SERP on the right has a video snippet linking to a site outside of Google’s domain.
The “All” tab of Google’s SERP illustrates this distinction. The “videos” tab on the right presents all video results, and, depending on the search query, videos may also appear in the “images” tab.
Key moments are another feature likely to be encountered on the “All” tab. How-to and explainer videos often have a chance to appear on the first SERP if Google deems them capable of adequately addressing a user’s query. This underscores the importance of leveraging video marketing and tools such as Google Search Console’s video indexing report to ensure your videos are indexed, thereby enhancing your SEO efforts and increasing your likelihood of ranking prominently on SERPs.
Essentially, the report aids in determining whether your video has been crawled and indexed by Google, providing insights into where to concentrate your video optimization efforts. It answers three fundamental questions:
The report offers numerous features to track the performance of your videos, optimize them, and elevate their SEO value. By addressing any issues hindering indexing, you can utilize the GSC video indexing report to confirm the fix and monitor its presence in the Google index.
The Video Impressions Overlay displays the number of daily impressions over time, while the Sitemap Filter allows you to prioritize indexing information for on-site videos of paramount importance.
For further assistance with understanding the indexing report or optimizing your videos, contact us for a consultation.
Each video on your site will display one of two statuses. If the video has been successfully indexed, no further action is required. However, the purpose of Search Console’s video indexing report is to identify those that aren’t indexed.
Here are some of the most common reasons why, according to Google, a video may not be indexed on your site, along with the necessary steps to rectify the issue.
For indexing a video, Google must locate and index the webpage hosting it. You can use the URL Inspection Tool to verify whether a particular webpage is or can be indexed.
If your video isn’t appearing in the GSC video indexing report due to a page indexing issue, there are several steps you can take to resolve it. Ensure that the page is listed on a sitemap and that it hasn’t been blocked from indexing, either through a robots.txt rule, a login, or a noindex rule.
Should these measures not resolve the issue, revisit the page’s content to ensure it doesn’t violate Google Search Essentials by being spammy or a duplicate page.
Google indexes only one video per page, a straightforward rule with no exceptions. Therefore, if you encounter a “detected videos” status in your indexing report, Search Console is indicating that it found your videos, but only one has been indexed.
Assign each video to a separate page. Unless you operate a video-on-demand streaming service, packing multiple videos onto a single page does not benefit your SEO strategy. For video walkthroughs or product demos, allocate each video to a distinct product page.
In certain instances, hosting multiple videos on a page can enhance user experience. For example, a learning course page may contain multiple videos. Ensure that the anchor video you wish to be discovered in search is positioned at the top and prominently displayed, then check if it’s been picked up in the GSC video indexing report.
You can also consider consolidating your video content. Two video clips showcasing different parts of a tutorial could be combined into a single, longer video. This may require some editing and adjustments to your site design, but having only one video ensures it indexes and provides more opportunities to feature key moments for all topics covered in the tutorial.
This is essentially a “no cheating” rule. The GSC indexing report may indicate it can’t find the “prominent” video if you’re employing techniques to manipulate the algorithm. Even if you have only one video on the page, you may still receive this error message. Here are some reasons Google may not recognize a “prominent” video:
These issues could indicate an attempt to deceive Google’s bots to improve your site’s ranking. Even if unintentional, one way to leverage the Google Search Console’s video indexing report is to identify recurring issues in your theme or site design that are flagging videos as “not prominent.”
It’s somewhat unclear what technical fixes Google desires to resolve this issue. Google suggests, somewhat unhelpfully:
“We recommend fixing other issues before fixing this one. In some cases, this issue might be caused by rendering issues in Googlebot, so you might not be able to fix it, but you should ensure that the video is reasonably prominent on your page.”
So what constitutes “reasonably prominent?”
The best advice here is to focus on the user experience (UX). In light of Google’s recent Helpful Content Update, it’s safe to assume that the search engine giant is prioritizing content that serves humans first. Ask yourself, would a human know what the prominent video is? Could anyone not only find the video but also find it valuable?
If you are flagged for prominence in your GSC video indexing report, use that information to optimize other areas of the page that stand out to Google. Add titles and text blocks that expand on the video, and ensure internal links from elsewhere on your site lead to the video page.
Double-check that you haven’t hidden the video on mobile devices, even if it’s visible on desktop. Ensure you’ve embedded the video—don’t just link to an external sharing site. Most web design platforms make it easy to embed a video hosted on YouTube. Lastly, review the video on different-sized screens to ensure it’s displaying well.
The video above is “prominent” from a UX perspective, and the surrounding content on the page supports the video’s theme and purpose.
These issues may seem straightforward, but you may still be baffled if you encounter them in your Search Console video indexing report. Google supports most video encodings and has generous size guidelines, allowing 140-1080 pixels in height. Most likely, your issue is related to something else.
Any error message regarding position or size could be due to the video not loading quickly enough on the page.
Use a responsive, lightweight theme. Also, ensure your videos are embedded at their actual size and don’t require any unusual barriers to start playing. Avoid “click this link to go to our video” or requiring users to click on an image of a video player before the actual video appears on the screen. If the video doesn’t show up at its actual size and position as soon as the page loads, you could receive one of the above errors in your Search Console video indexing report. Another way to use this information is to make sure the video’s URL ends with the correct file extension.
Or AVI, MOV, MPEG, or any of the other supported encodings. Using a plugin or a drag-and-drop theme builder can help you avoid bugs in your code.
The thumbnail is the image that serves as a preview for your video. You can use the GSC video indexing report to understand whether a thumbnail-related issue is preventing your video from being indexed—and there are quite a few of them.
Here are a few potential problems with your video thumbnail:
Thankfully, fixing a thumbnail issue flagged in your Search Console video indexing report is relatively straightforward. Ensure you’re using schema markup and structured data to inform Google’s bots of the content on the page—many WordPress plugins can assist with this.
One possible issue is your metadata—it must be consistent. For example, if your image URL is different in your structured data and HTML tags, Google’s bots will be confused and may not index your video. Along those lines, ensure you have a video sitemap. This will provide Google with all the necessary information about your video, including the thumbnail images. You can then use the GSC video indexing report to track its indexing status.
For other issues, such as the thumbnail being too small, transparent, or blocked, you likely just need a new image. In plain terms, choose a normal picture. Ensure it’s a common file extension like PNG or JPEG, has a clear resolution, and reasonably represents the content of your video.
This alert means that Google has detected a video on your site but has chosen not to index it. The reason for this may not be immediately apparent. Check the other fixes listed above and continually monitor the Search Console. Several days later, you may see in your video indexing report that your video is now indexed.
Here’s a quick rundown of everything you should check off your list when attempting to get your video indexed:
If deciphering how to use the GSC video indexing report and optimize all your video pages seems overwhelming, seek assistance. Coalition Technologies has SEO experts who can extensively analyze your site and identify crucial fixes to improve your organic rankings. Contact us today to learn more about how addressing technical issues can significantly enhance your site’s visibility in organic search results.
What is video indexing and retrieval?
You can check if a video has been indexed using the GSC video indexing report. Indexing means a video has been detected by Google and entered into its index, making it possible for it to appear in Search. Video retrieval is when Google presents a particular video from a pool of available candidates in response to a user’s text query.
Why should you ensure your videos are indexed?
Once your videos are indexed, they are available for Google to showcase in Search in response to user queries. This is the primary reason to use Google Search Console’s video indexing report. Video is also believed to be a more engaging medium than text or static images and, for that reason, desirable for Google to showcase. Embedding more videos into your webpages and ensuring they’re indexed can help you rank higher in Google’s Search results.
What is the video indexing issue in Google Search Console?
There are numerous reasons why you might not see your video in the GSC video indexing report. The page itself might not have been indexed, the video might not be prominently placed on the page, there may be more than one video on the page, or the video might not be optimized according to Google’s guidelines. In any case, there’s always a fix! Refer to the article above or reach out to us at Coalition for professional assistance in improving the ROI on your video uploads.
How to get a video to rank on Google?
Creating a high-ranking video involves many factors. Once you’ve used the GSC video indexing report to have your video indexed, follow the guidelines to further optimize your video as well. This includes optimizing the metadata, adding a transcript, and positioning the video prominently on the page. The video itself must be useful and engaging and should ideally be based on a topic with high-traffic potential.
How to index YouTube videos on Google?
You can index a YouTube video just as with any other video—by creating and maintaining a video sitemap and submitting it in Google Webmaster Tools. This will ensure Google attempts to crawl it and, if it complies with all the necessary guidelines, indexes it. It should then show up in your GSC video indexing report.
How does a video sitemap help in video indexing?
A video sitemap provides Google with all the necessary information about your videos, including where they’re hosted, metadata, thumbnails, keywords, and more. Submitting your Video Sitemap in Google Webmaster Tools will ensure Google is aware of your videos and will
