If you’re looking for particular moments in long videos, it can sometimes be a hassle to go through the whole thing. And because they aren’t skimmable like text, we can sometimes overlook video as content, according to Google Search Product Manager Prashant Baheti. But now Google is giving a sort of solution to this by highlighting the relevant parts of long videos that may be connected to what you’re searching for. However, this will be based on timestamps provided by video creators.
Google says they are developing new ways to “understand and organize video content in Search” so that it will be as useful for you as you would search through text and even images. Now in the search results, instead of just seeing relevant videos, you’ll also see the relevant parts of the videos that may be released to what you’re looking for. This is useful for videos like how-to’s, documentaries, speeches, etc.
The catch though is that the video creator has to provide timestamps by bookmarking and marking up their videos. It can be specific parts that they want to highlight or parts that they think people are looking for. This isn’t limited to just YouTube creators as Google said they’re also working with other video publishers like CBS Sports and NDTV who will be providing timestamps for their own videos. So this means whatever platform you’re on, you can markup and this will show up in search results.
This will be useful not just for those who want to scan videos quickly but also for those who are using screen readers so video content will be more accessible to them. Links to these important parts in videos will show up in Search in English for YouTube videos for now but they’re working on making it more accessible for video content creators across platforms.
It would have been really easier if Google would just use their machine learning powers like what they were doing for podcasts but for now, the burden is on the content creators. Hopefully, they will be able to improve this and make it easier for both creators and searchers.
