Google is adding a new report to Search Console that will help you understand how your videos perform in search results.
Previewed in May at Google I/O, the Video Indexing report makes it easy to identify and fix issues preventing your videos from surfacing in Google Search.
You can use the report to answer questions such as:
- In how many pages has Google identified a video?
- Which videos were indexed successfully?
- What are the issues preventing videos from being indexed?
Like other reports in Search Console, when you fix a current issue, you can use the report to validate the fix and track how the video pages are updated in Google’s index.
Before today’s update, Google Search Console only reported on videos marked up with structured data.
The video indexing report isn’t dependent on structured data to identify videos and therefore doesn’t report on the validity of video markup. That means you’ll need to check both reports if you publish videos on your site.
Update To URL Inspection Tool
In addition to adding a new report to Search Console, Google is updating the URL Inspection tool with the ability to check the video indexing status of a specific page.
After entering a URL in the inspection tool, if Google detects a video in it, you will see the following in the results:
- Details such as the video URL and the thumbnail URL.
- The page status shows whether the video was indexed or not.
List of issues preventing the video from being indexed.
The Video Indexing report is rolling out gradually over the next few months.
Source: Google Search Central Blog
Featured Image: Screenshot from developers.google.com/search/blog, July 2022.
