Google Sending Searchers To Nonexistent Videos

Can't find that video that Google listed in your results? It's not you. It's Google.

Google offers a dedicated Google Video search designed to bring back videos from across the web, in addition to its own YouTube service. However, something seems seriously wrong with Google Video. Some searches promising to lead people to video content fail to actually do so.

Here’s an example using Apple:

In this case, I searched for “Apple” on Google, then selected “More” and then used the “Videos” option. The results are the same as if I went to Google Videos directly. Both the second and third listings promise that there’s some video content on these pages. But neither page has videos on them.

Here’s another example, this time with “Google” as the search term:

As with the Apple examples, neither of the two listings highlighted have videos on their pages.

The first example from Google, for Google Inbox, does have a “Watch the video” link on the page. When clicked, that will cause an actual video to load within the page. But for the rest, getting to videos from the pages is difficult to impossible.

For example, the second Google exmple — for Project Tango — makes the video available only if you figure out that clicking in the “For Developers” box will make a box appear at the top of the page that in turn requires another click to play the video:

That’s a lot of work and hunting for someone who thought clicking on a listing at Google would take them directly to where they would watch a video immediately play. I only figured out the video was there among all the other content by going to the HTML source code.

With the Apple pages. I simple can’t find any way to trigger videos at all. There are references to video content in the source code, but these references don’t appear to be rending the video into the pages in any way. Yet, this seems enough for Google to list videos as somehow being in these pages.

We’re checking with Google for comment about this.

Credit source: http://searchengineland.com/google-sending-searchers-to-nonexistent-videos-223747

Comments

Is Google Testing The Penguin 4.0 Algorithm?

I think we are on the verge of seeing Penguin 4.0 launch soon at Google - I think we are just about there. I know, I know, it's been a while. I have seen some chatter in the industry, on and off chatter, over the past 12 hours or so, that people are noticing some drastic changes with the Google search rankings on and off. It can be nothing, it can be a blip, it can be a different algorithm or it can be people making stuff up - but it also can be Google testing Penguin 4.0 to a limited set of searchers. The folks at WebmasterWorld over the past 12 hours or so have been asking about it: JS Harris, a senior Webmaster World member said: I have a small list of 10 distinct keywords for my site that I check when I wonder if a major update has occurred. The bottom few results on page one generally come and go but the top spots stay immortal. They stay there, that is, until there is a major update. I'm only ever mildly surprised when I see a would be con...

Google Earnings Report Shows New AdWords Ad Format Increased Click Through Rates

Google announced their Q2 earnings last night and beat estimates, although some are worried about mobile ads being an issue and Nikesh Arora leaving the company. But the earnings report showed a couple things advertisers here would be interested in, at least two things: (1) The new ad format used for AdWords ads in the search results, that blend in better, had a nice increase in click through rates and that lead to more money for Google despite lower CPC prices. Here are before and after on the ad formats: Old ad format: New ad format: (2) Google broke down where the paid clicks came from in more detail for the first time: Aggregate paid clicks, which include clicks related to ads served on Google sites and the sites of our Network members, increased approximately 25% over the second quarter of 2013 and increased approximately 2% over the first quarter of 2014. Sites paid clicks, which include clicks related to ads we serve on Google owned and operated ...

eBay Admits Google Penalty Had A "Dramatic Impact" On Earnings

Back in May we reported that eBay had some sort of penalty that hit their Google search visibility by about 50%. That is major but now we somewhat know how major. Danny Sullivan reports on Search Engine Land that it may have costed them $200 million. On the eBay earnings call yesterday, eBay’s chief financial officer Bob Swan said : Now, let’s turn to the Marketplaces business. Marketplaces delivered $2.2 billion in revenue, which grew 6%, GMV grew 8%, and operating margin declined 340 basis points. It was a challenging quarter. As John indicated, we got off to a good start, but we had significant obstacles late May.The combination of the cyberattack and the Google SEO had an immediate and dramatic impact on GMV growth. June GMV growth was 7% driven by slower active buyer growth and lower conversion. In light of these events, we have made significant investments to get eBay users reengaged, including couponing, seller incentives and increased marketing spend... ...

Internet Marketing

Search This Blog