Google Search Console: New Video Features For Even Better Results

On Monday, Google added two pretty big video features to Google Search Console.

Under Enhancements, you’ll now get a report on any videos marked up in Schema.org and parsed by Google, as well as the ability to see how your videos are helping your search appearances.

What does that mean and how can you use these features to improve SEO?

Glad you asked!

1. Video Enhancement report

If you’re a publisher running an SEO-friendly video player (such as the Mediavine Video Player) which outputs Schema.org markup, you’ll now see a list of pages in which Google has found video content.

This report is designed to help you debug videos that are marked up for Google, ensuring that they’re “Valid” and that you’re sending through as much meta information as possible.

Meta information is data about a video such as a description, its length, and other video details Google can use to figure out what it’s about. This tool helps ensure that all available information gets where it needs to go.

The great thing for publishers is that the Mediavine Video Player is fully optimized for SEO, so any video embedded inside a post will automatically output all of the required Schema.org fields, earning you that coveted Green Valid checkbox.

What about Videos in Recipe Cards?

Food bloggers are no strangers to the Enhancements tab in Search Console.

Many have likely been chasing the dream of all Green Valid recipes, and one of the requirements for reaching that hallowed ground is video.

IF you put a video inside your Recipe Card, it will now also appear under video enhancements. If you’re running a recent version of Create and are using Mediavine videos, you should still pass with flying colors.

Older versions of Create did not support the full markup, so we recommend upgrading to the latest, 1.4.18, which will automatically regenerate all old videos for you. You simply need to install the new version and clear your site’s cache.

2. Video in Search appearances

The second fun feature shows how your hard work pays off in terms of search appearances. How so?

If you run a video inside a post, it makes you eligible for video carousels and other video-specific positions. While food and news bloggers have already been enjoying the carousel spots for their respective content, now any publisher can be eligible for the video-only carousels.

You can see how often you’re marked up as a video result in regular web searches by clicking Performance > Search results > Search Appearance.

If you’re appearing in any Video results, you’ll see a result called Videos. Click it and explore to the tabs to see which results are bringing in video traffic.

[NOTE for food blogs: remember, you’re likely showing up inside recipe results and NOT video results, so don’t be bummed if you see none here.]

Discover Appearance

Publishers who typically see a lot of Discover traffic also gained this feature. Simply click on Performance > Discover > Discover Appearance.

You can now see how often your videos appear inside the discover feed, along with which pages are getting that nice boost from having video.

So what does this all mean?

It’s just further confirmation that Google wants video content, and you don’t have to rely solely on YouTube to be eligible for video results.

For Mediavine publishers – another shameless plug alert – the good news is that the Mediavine Video Player and Create are both designed to help you take full advantage of these Google Search opportunities.