Catalyst Search Matters Search Marketing Blog

Apple’s successful launch of video to its popular iTunes service has generated a lot of media buzz about the growing search demand for videos.

For both Google and Yahoo, video search appears to be all about content distribution and maximizing additional revenue streams. Health related websites that offer education videos and video testimonials on your website will enhance the user experience, and with the infancy of video-search, you will have the opportunity to grab “market share” of the online video search space. However, because video search is so new, Catalyst on-line believes that video search will not be a significant driver of traffic to a health-related website in the foreseeable future.

Benefits of Video Search

While Catalyst on-line does not anticipate that video search will be a huge traffic generator in the foreseeable future, we believe that there are some non-traffic related benefits of adding video to a website including:

First to Market Opportunities: With video search being so early in its life-cycle, there exists tremendous opportunity for companies to gain significant “market share” of the video market by being first to market.

For example the phrase “high blood pressure” has over 38 million competing pages on Google for this keyphrase, making a top ten ranking a daunting task. A check of Google video, shows only 55 competing videos, which makes a top ten ranking much easier to attain.

Supporting ‘offline’ marketing initiatives: Much like traditional website marketing, video search and online video content are powerful tools for capitalizing on the interest created by television advertisements, marketing brochures, and other offline media.

Improved Patient Education: Video search and online video content help health-related websites go beyond simple text and images to educate patients and reinforce the brand message.

Technical Aspects of Video Search

Yahoo and Google are both approaching the submission and searchability of video differently. The reason for this is that neither Google nor Yahoo can actually spider an audio or video file. Instead, what they are doing is reading a text file that is associated with the video.

Yahoo has decided to use “Media RSS” for the text file while Google prefers a time-stamped text file (i.e. a close-captioned file).

For more technical details on how to optimize and submit a video file to Yahoo and Google, please contact Catalyst on-line at (617) 244-4697 or via email at info@catline.com