Google Launches Video Snippets in Search Results
Google doesn't seem to be standing still lately and keeps rolling out new features, updates, and algorithm changes. A clear example is the announcement released today, unveiling a new feature in the search results. It's called video snippets. Let's take a closer look:
What Are Video Snippets?
Video snippets are a new Google feature that lets you jump directly to a specific section of a video. While scanning the structure of an article and moving to the section you want is pretty straightforward, the same couldn't be said for videos, and that's exactly why Google is trying to solve this with this new feature.
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What Impact Could This Feature Have on Our SEO Strategy?
Honestly, if we use this feature well, the potential could be huge. Imagine a guide for learning how to play chess where the user wants to jump straight to the "how to set up the board" section. Normally, this section would be hidden and the user wouldn't even know whether we cover that topic in the video.
However, with this new feature, not only would the user see it and access the content directly, but they would likely end up watching the video. In other words, we would go from having no user to having the opportunity to attract and retain them.
The question we're now asking ourselves is what will happen on the user's screen. Will Google take them to YouTube? Will it play the video directly in the search results? Depending on Google's approach, this could wreck the metrics of many channels or, on the contrary, greatly contribute to their growth.
Can We Use This Feature?
For now, the videos eligible to appear in this new format are:
- Those in English
- From YouTube
- Whose authors have provided timestamp information in the video description.
Even so, Google has announced that they will soon introduce a way for videos from other platforms to also have this design in the search results.
For now, they have provided a link with a survey to join the beta program.
We have just applied for one of our clients, and if we are accepted, we'll share the results we see with you.
Conclusions
The big question we SEO professionals ask ourselves when Google makes these announcements is... what does Google really want with this change? That's when ghosts start appearing in our heads of Google playing videos in the SERPs and preventing users from ever leaving the search results, further reinforcing the concept of zero-click searches.
We will closely follow the evolution of this new implementation and hope it greatly reinforces the visibility of channels rather than the opposite.
To wrap up, it's worth mentioning that now more than ever, it seems essential to devote more effort to our YouTube SEO strategy.
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What do you think about this new change? What repercussions will it have on channels? We'd love to hear your opinion.
Author: David Kaufmann
I've spent the last 10+ years completely obsessed with SEO — and honestly, I wouldn't have it any other way.
My career hit a new level when I worked as a senior SEO specialist for Chess.com — one of the top 100 most visited websites on the entire internet. Operating at that scale, across millions of pages, dozens of languages, and one of the most competitive SERPs out there, taught me things no course or certification ever could. That experience changed my perspective on what great SEO really looks like — and it became the foundation for everything I've built since.
From that experience, I founded SEO Alive — an agency for brands that are serious about organic growth. We're not here to sell dashboards and monthly reports. We're here to build strategies that actually move the needle, combining the best of classical SEO with the exciting new world of Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) — making sure your brand shows up not just in Google's blue links, but inside the AI-generated answers that ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews are delivering to millions of people every single day.
And because I couldn't find a tool that handled both of those worlds properly, I built one myself — SEOcrawl, an enterprise SEO intelligence platform that brings together rankings, technical audits, backlink monitoring, crawl health, and AI brand visibility tracking all in one place. It's the platform I always wished existed.
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