Google Overhauls Video SEO Documentation

Google has video SEO documentation to vastly clarify the video indexing criteria and technical requirements. Plus, Google added a new watch page section to the document and expanded the examples in the document.

There are a ton of changes to the document, if you want to compare both, you can compare:

I think Google made these changes because of the confusion around the video mode changes to when Google shows a video thumbnail in the search results.

The new indexing criteria says:

To be eligible for video features, a video must meet the following indexing requirements:

• The watch page must be indexed.
• The indexed watch page must be performing well in Search before its video can be considered for indexing. Just because the watch page is indexed doesn’t mean that the video will also be indexed.
• The video must be embedded on a watch page.
• The video can’t be hidden behind other elements. If you’re using a paywall (for example, users need to sign in or subscribe before seeing the video), add paywall structured data so that Google can still find and index the video.
• The video must have a valid thumbnail that’s available at a stable URL.

Google also spoke about how you need to create a dedicated watch page for each video. Google said, “To be eligible for video features (including video results on the main search results page, Video mode, Key Moments, the Live Badge, and other rich formats), create a dedicated watch page for each video, if it makes sense for your business.”

A watch page’s main purpose is to show users a single video. The following pages are watch pages because watching an individual video is the main reason the user is visiting the page:

• A video landing page
• A TV episode video player page
• A news video watch page
• A sports highlight page
• An events clip page

These pages aren’t watch pages because the video is complementary to the rest of the content on the page:

• A blog post that reviews an embedded video
• A product page with a 360 video of a product
• A video category page that lists multiple videos of equal prominence
• A movie review page with an embedded movie trailer

Here is an illustration Google added of the watch page:

Plus there were a lot more changes to the page.

So if you are doing any video SEO – you probably want to compare the two pages.

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