If your video ranks on the top of YouTube search results that doesn’t mean it will secure the first spot in the video carousel on Google Search Engine Result Pages or vice versa. According to a new report by a search engine optimization giant, RankRanger indicates there is a major difference in the algorithms of Google’s and YouTube’s method to rank videos.
Google’s current replacement of video thumbnails with a video carousel on the Google search engine results pages in July has influenced the ranking of videos on Google.
The survey conducted by the team of RankRanger consisted of 155 video carousel keywords and compared the position of the top six cards in each video carousel on Google search to the video URLs’ position in the YouTube search results.
To begin with, the top card inside the video carousel, normally, does not rank among the top 3, top 5, not even in the top 10 on YouTube search results page but what is more surprising is that the 2nd card average rated beyond the top 20. Simply, the two URLs within the first two cards of this video carousel are nowhere near each other on YouTube Search Results.
The results of the report showed the initial carousel video card had an average rank of 14 on the YouTube search results, while the second and third card in the video carousel showed an average position of 27 and 33 respectively, whereas cards in the 5th and 6th position were found to be above 50 on YouTube Search Results.
Here’s a screenshot showing the video card placement number in comparison to the video rankings on YouTube.
The report mentions that on YouTube, just the top three or four videos may appear above the fold on your laptop. And if you’re banking on creating videos particularly for the video carousel, then you can conclude from the above comparison that they won’t appear above the fold on YouTube itself. This says that even if we set the video carousels in the bunch of 3s, then the likelihood of your video showing in the first 3 cards and also ranking well on YouTube search results at the same time will probably be low.
The report confirms that the two platforms have a significantly different approach to position top videos on their respective platforms. While Google takes a note of its own video carousel to position a specific video in it. YouTube follows both its common keyword method and Google’s video carousel technique as well.
It is important to see that the video carousel is still in its early stages and things are certain to change as time progresses on and Google gets better at placing video content within it.