Mar 17, 22 | 6 min read
google short form videos
Reading time: 5 minutes
Since the pandemic started , we've seen a huge increase in the number of people watching Reels and TikTok videos. Are you the type of person who's also interested in those new trends?
If so, you'll be pleased to know that Google is already working on ways to show short videos in search results more frequently.
That statement came from Danielle Marshak, Product Manager at Google, in a podcast with Search Engine Journal (SEJ) where she shared that the company is already realizing that videos are becoming more popular than ever, mainly because this format can deliver much more information in a short period of time.
In fact, he is right: data has shown that online video is expected to account for more than 82% of all consumer internet traffic by 2022.
In a video we can see emotions, movement and tunisia email list tone of voice, elements that a text-only or image-only format could not provide with such clarity.
We all know that with the rise of TikTok, many other companies began to explore this new format, such as Instagram , which added the “Reels” feature, and YouTube, which has included “Youtube Shorts”.
Each of them has its own particularity and, as of yet, we do not have a standard concept of short video.
However, Marshak says "short" videos are those that are less than five minutes long and shot in a vertical aspect ratio.
From Google's perspective
We all know that Google has an amazing and very intelligent mechanism to crawl and organize all the results pages.
It's amazing to see how precise our queries are these days: no matter what topic we're searching for, we can always find pages that answer our questions.
However, most of Google's suggestions are just written content and that's because it's very good at reading and understanding text.
A study by Stone Temple showed that Google's search engine answered 74.3% of 5,000 questions, and of those answers, it had a 97.4% accuracy rate.
But have you tried searching for videos on Google? If you do, I think you'll notice the same thing I did: Google wasn't made to crawl those kinds of video resources, and there are a lot of weird search results.
This happens because videos are much more complex than text, and this is actually one of the reasons why videos can be richer than images and text.
There is a lot of information in a video to understand, such as audio, visual signs, images, movements, expressions and other elements.
Danielle shared that Google has a couple of teams that are investigating how crawlers can extract text/audio from a video to combine that information with some other elements, such as character recognition and visual cues.
By doing so, it would be easier for search engines to categorize and display them as a result. It's still early days of those improvements, but I'm already excited about what it will look like in the end. Would you like to see it?
Why short videos?
We can agree that there has never been as much content available on the Internet as we have today.
It is possible to find all the information we want in any possible format, which is very good because it allows each person to choose the way they prefer to consume that information.
When it comes to brands and their customers specifically, HubSpot, one of Rock Content’s partners, conducted research on consumer preferences toward brand marketing efforts. Check out what they found out:
Source: https://blog.hubspot.com/marketing/visu ... g-strategy
Here we can see that videos are number one on the list and I’m not really surprised since 60% of internet traffic revolves around videos . According to the same source, video lengths are getting shorter and shorter. Here’s another chart from Tech Smiths showing the preferred video length:
Source: https://www.techsmith.com/blog/video-length/
Seeing this data makes a lot of sense as to why Google is considering using search engine mechanics to display short videos (up to 5 minutes) on the results page. I honestly prefer those types of resources, as there is a lot we can explore and learn without spending too much time doing so.
Short videos can also be entertaining and insightful. Think about those DIY or how-to videos. They are much more fun than static text. People can also include music and movement, making it a way to create a deeper connection with the audience in a more engaging way as they are truly immersive.
And from what I see here, I'm not alone, as " mobile consumers are much more likely to view a 30-second snippet than scroll through a blog post or marketing copy ."
From a marketing perspective
For those who still think that short videos are only for teenagers who like to create line dance trends, you might be surprised by these facts:
84% of people were convinced to buy a product or service based on the brands video ( Wyzowl )
72% of people prefer video over text to learn about a new product or service ( Colormatics )
68% of people will happily watch a business video if it's less than a minute long ( Vidyard )
93% of marketers have acquired a customer through a social media video ( Animoto )
More than half of marketers (51%) who use short-form video plan to increase their investment in 2022 ( Hubspot )
63% of marketers say video content gets the best ROI on social media ( Animoto ).
It’s time to take a broader look at the way we create content. But of course, always remember to understand who your audience is and what channels they’re on. As we’ve mentioned in other posts, the best marketing strategies are the ones that are customer-focused .
In case you decide to go ahead with that strategy, it’s important to remember that people don’t care about scripts and elaborate productions. They want to feel connected and get to know you, your brand, and your product in a matter of seconds, so get creative!
