- There is a new feature coming out on Google Search
that could help you get more views on YouTube
and it's all to do with this.
- [Multiple Voices] vidIQ, vidIQ, vidIQ.com
- Hello, I am Rob and welcome back to vidIQ,
the YouTube tool and channel
that educates you on your YouTube journey.
And if you want to ensure
that you never miss another lesson,
subscribe to the channel and click on the notification bell.
(bell dings)
School's in session.
Was that too corny?
I'm sure you probably already know this,
but just in case you don't,
YouTube is the second largest search engine in the world.
Making a magnet for educational and tutorial content,
for answers to questions people are asking the internet.
Google of course, is the king of search.
And if you do your essay right,
you know, your titles, tags, descriptions,
you will discover just how much of a gold mine
views from Google can be for your YouTube videos.
This very simple video on how to delete a YouTube video
has over a quarter of a million views.
Its part of an ever growing strategy
that we've been working on over 2019.
And you can watch the full video over here.
But, this particular video
got over ninety thousand views from external sources.
Sixty thousand views from Google search directly.
Just like topping the YouTube search rankings,
topping the Google search rankings
is prime internet real estate.
And so far Google has accommodated video
either through video shelves, like this.
Or through featured video snippets.
But that's all about to change with an upgrade
to Google search that's called key moments.
This works by identifying key anchor points on a video,
and including them as links on the Google search page.
In this example from Pat Flynn
on how to start a YouTube podcast,
we have several key moments that we can tap on
to launch us straight into the YouTube app
at that key moment in the video.
What makes this even more enticing,
is the prominence the video gets versus the others
on the search page.
As well as being in the top of the video searches,
the key moments creates an even bigger footprint,
especially on mobile devices.
I mean, basically, this is a search result
you simply cannot ignore.
So, now you know what Google key moments are,
and just potentially how powerful they could be,
how do you get them to work for your YouTube videos?
It's all to do with timestamps.
In your video description, or video comments,
you can create time stamps
by typing out hours, minutes and seconds
separated by colon.
As an example,
we've added several time stamps to this video.
And, while they don't look any different here
in the video manager page,
to a viewer on a video watch page,
they appear a blue clickable links.
Which, when you click on them,
take you to that timestamp in the video.
Now, timestamps as a YouTube feature are not new.
They've been around for years,
and video creators have been using them
to chop up longer videos
and also to provide an extra little bit
of SEO in their video descriptions.
But in the future,
what Google search key moments is going to do,
is use those timestamps to create these chapters
on the videos within google search.
So, if you haven't been using timestamps in the past,
now is a perfect opportunity to start experimenting.
Because this could effectively be one of those
land grab situations.
Most videos don't have timestamps on them.
So you may have have the opportunity to capitalize
by adding timestamps to your videos now
to potentially make them rank hire in Google search
and give you all of that prime internet real estate
to get people to watch your content.
Especially for tutorial and educational video content,
where people are asking questions
and you are providing the exact answers they want.
So, just to confirm,
to create a timestamp in a video description
or a YouTube comment,
type in seconds, minutes, and hours if required
separated by colons to automatically
create the timestamp link.
Oh, and make sure to put in some rich SEO text after it too.
Remember that these are key moments and the potential viewer
will want to know exactly what they are getting.
There are key benefits to Google search key moments.
And let's be honest,
it doesn't take that long to create timestamps.
You watch a video, and think of it as if you're
writing out an essay and
you're just adding subheadings to your main title.
But, as a new YouTube/Google feature,
you probably have questions that I also have questions about
and I don't know the answers.
So, let's discuss.
As of time of recording,
key moments seems to be a mobile-only feature.
Because, when I did exactly the same search on my desktop,
the key moments from Pat Flynn's video
didn't appear, just the usual video shelf.
I'm not sure if there are any hard rules
about the set up of timestamps either.
In Pat Flynn's video,
the timestamps were way down the description.
But the word "timestamp" was included,
along with hyphens next to the supporting timestamp text.
However, on the Creator Insider video
that announced this feature, there was no such formality.
And a big question to YouTube would be,
if I am going to take the time and effort
to create these timestamps,
are you going to give me bonus points
and maybe push me up the search rankings
in both YouTube and Google?
I suspect not.
But, adding those keywords into the timestamps
is only going to help your video description
and your video overall.
So, you might as well start doing it.
With that in mind, we here at vidIQ
are going to start including timestamps
in every single video that we publish, including this one.
So, check them out in the video description
and in the pinned comments.
Now, if you want to learn more about YouTube tools
that could get you more views,
check out our playlist over here.
And if you want to learn what vidIQ can do for you,
that's a Chrome extension
that will help you research YouTube,
analyze videos, audit your own channel,
we've got a beginner's guide down there.
Thank you very much for watching.
Enjoy the rest of your video-making day.