How Google Video Ranks Videos
Ranking pages and images is rather easy based on the different variables provided to you by the “community”, but have you ever wondered how does Google rank videos which are hosted on it’s own servers?
This video of Hunter Walk, a product manager at Google Video gives a bit more about what Google relies on when ranking a video. Ranking video is much like search engines were 5 years ago when metadata and on-page data provided by the owner itself was given a high priority. According to Walk Google puts emphasis on the same metadata provided by the creator of the video, along with data provided by the community which can help offset misleading video data.
[via GoogleSystem]
That is interesting. I had always wondered how Google ranks its videos (and now You Tube’s videos on its index for that matter. I wondered whether it follows the same principle in terms of on-page optimization and link popularity for normal web sites. The other factor that could be taken into account could be the popularity of videos themselves, in terms of how streams of that particular video has been served. I came across an interesting case study whereby a website was able to obtain at top 3 organic listing in under 24 hours for a competitive term. You can view the case study (appropriately in a video format) at trafficgeysermethod.com. I think the reason they have been able to get the top rankings in record time is because there is an overt reliance on meta data and on-page tags at this stage for ranking videos. Also they provide a service for uploading your videos from their servers to multiple video hosting/streaming at the same time (benefit is savings in time for the uploader). The reason why they are getting high rankings quickly could possibly be because a) they are tagging all the videos appropriately b)They are using keywords in teh description tags for the keywords they want to rank well for and c) The popularity of videos on the various sites are according them a higher popularity (as a proxy for link popularity).