There are only so many results on a search page. You do a search at Google, you typically get about ten results. Those results are either web pages, videos, news results, blog posts, images and so on. Video results seem to be the most growing result vertical on the page. That being said, the question coming up at WebmasterWorld is, do we need videos to compete in the future of Google's search results?
Excellent question. Personally, I think the answer is yes. I think currently, the best place to put videos are on YouTube. Clearly, YouTube videos will not drive direct traffic to your site, but you can add links from the video description to your pages and you can embed branding overlays in the videos to hopefully direct traffic to your site. Why YouTube if the direct traffic doesn't land on your site? Simply because those YouTube video rank better than videos hosted on your site or on other third party video sharing sites.
The bottom line is that videos are growing and that just means more and more videos will be finding their way into the search results. If a video takes up one of the ten results, then that is one less result for a web page. So don't you think you should try to get your video to show up in those results?
Amit had a timely post today, showing video results, extreme mode. Just take a look over there and see how shocking those results are.
As Tedster said in his post at WebmasterWorld:
So many people find reading difficult - especially online but even otherwise - that I'm pretty sure we'll see a push to more video results in the near future. As long as the end users click and watch, it will keep increasing.
Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.
