Stay Tuned for a Video SEO Test…

Update: The test results are in. Check it out here – Google Video SEO Test Findings

Everybody knows Google owns YouTube. Everybody knows Google has speech recognition abilities because of Google Voice. Everybody knows Google hires smart people. And everybody knows that everybody knows you can spam the hell out of video search because the content of the video doesn’t have to match closely with the meta data, links and other content on the page. It’s like going back ten years in SEO – back when you could stuff meta keywords and actually rank for long-tail things that didn’t even appear in your content.

Sorry about the everybody knows thing, but I’ve had that Concrete Blonde cover of the song from Leonard Cohen (remember Pump Up the Volume? Awesome movie.) in my head all day. Moving on…

I’m sure you see what I’m getting at.

Google could know what words are being said in a video even if those words do not appear anywhere else, such as in the video title, page title, video description, tags, comments, or incoming links. They may not be there yet, but I’d bet a box of chocolates and a long-stem rose they they’ll get there soon.

I’m also curious about the effect a video transcript has on the rankings of a YouTube video with captions turned off vs with captions turned on. In the case of a transcript uploaded without timing codes, YouTube does recognize the voice because it has to time the caption to coincide with what is being said in the video.

What are the implications of voice recognition to SEO and video marketing online? Well, for one, imagine film companies, television advertising agencies and large businesses who market with video all hiring SEOs to do keyword research BEFORE the script is even written. Here you go Mrs. Scriptwriter, a list of things for you to write into the script. Use as many of these words as you can – especially this one and this one.

Like I said, I doubt Google is there yet, but why not test things out? Today we recorded three videos, each with its own three-word, nonsense phrase that returned 0 results on Google with quotes.

• Video 1 =  No transcript uploaded
  • Nonsense phrase will not appear ONLY in the voice of the person in the video.
• Video 2 = Transcript uploaded with captions turned off
  • Nonsense phrase will appear in the video and in the transcript, but nowhere else.
• Video 3 = Transcript uploaded as captions
  • Nonsense phrase appears in video + transcript only – captions turned on.

What do YOU think is going to happen? Stay tuned…