Google video structured data with Clip markup and Seek markup

Here are some new methods to make your videos stand out in Google Search.

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At Google I/O, John Mueller, Google Search Advocate, spoke about new video structured data that you can use to help your videos gain more visibility in Google Search. The new structured data is called Clip markup and Seek markup and they work to help Google create key moment video clips in Google Search.

The announcement. About 9 minutes into John Mueller’s I/O talk about What’s new in Search – he talked about these new markup options to enhance your videos in Google Search.

Here is a screen shot of key moments in Google Search:

Google Key Moments

Clip markup. To manually tell Google what timestamp and label to use for the key moments feature, nest the following properties in your VideoObject. While Clip properties aren’t required, you must add the following properties if you want Google to show the timestamps and labels that you specify for your video, instead of the video segments that Google may automatically show for your video.

Note, YouTube videos handle this automatically for you.

Clip Markup 1621422957

Seek markup. To tell Google how your URL structure works, so that Google can display key moments that are automatically identified for your video, nest the following properties in your VideoObject. While SeekToAction properties aren’t required, you must add the following properties if you want Google to understand how your URL structure works, so Google can link users to a point within the video.

If you prefer to identify key moments in a video yourself, instead of letting Google automatically identify key moments, use Clip markup instead of SeekToAction.

Seek markup is not live yet, it is coming soon.

Seek Markup 1621422968

The video announcement. Here is the video where John Mueller announced this news:

You can learn more about these markups in the Google developer docs.

Why we care. With more and more videos showing in Google Search, you will want to take efforts to make your videos stand out from the rest. Using Clip or Seek markup can help richen up your video results in Google Search to help improve click through rates from Google Search to your videos.


About the author

Barry Schwartz
Staff
Barry Schwartz is a technologist and a Contributing Editor to Search Engine Land and a member of the programming team for SMX events. He owns RustyBrick, a NY based web consulting firm. He also runs Search Engine Roundtable, a popular search blog on very advanced SEM topics.

In 2019, Barry was awarded the Outstanding Community Services Award from Search Engine Land, in 2018 he was awarded the US Search Awards the "US Search Personality Of The Year," you can learn more over here and in 2023 he was listed as a top 50 most influential PPCer by Marketing O'Clock.

Barry can be followed on X here and you can learn more about Barry Schwartz over here or on his personal site.

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