Google starts highlighting key moments from videos in Search

Google today announced an update to how it handles videos in search results. Instead of just listing relevant videos on the search results page, Google will now also highlight the most relevant parts of longer videos, based on timestamps provided by the video creators. That's especially useful for how-to videos or documentaries.

"Videos aren't skimmable like text, meaning it can be easy to overlook video content altogether," Google Search product manager Prashant Baheti writes in today's announcement. "Now, just like we've worked to make other types of information more easily accessible, we're developing new ways to understand and organize video content in Search to make it more useful for you."

In the search results, you will then be able to see direct links to the different parts of a video and a click on those will take you right into that part of the video.

To make this work, content creators first have to mark up their videos with bookmarks for the specific segments they want to highlight, no matter what platform they are on. Indeed, it's worth stressing that this isn't just a feature for YouTube creators. Google says it's already working with video publishers like CBS Sports and NDTV, who will soon start marking up their videos.

I'm somewhat surprised that Google isn't using its machine learning wizardry to mark up videos automatically. For now, the burden is on the video creator and given how much work simply creating a good video is, it remains to be seen how many of them will do so. On the other hand, though, it'll give them a chance to highlight their work more prominently on Google Search, though Google doesn't say whether the markup will have any influence on a video's ranking on its search results pages.