Google Image Search Can Now Display Results for Videos

Google has developed a new feature that now shows videos as part of image search results.  Google tested this feature earlier in the year, and the video structure data schema that now supports image and recipe information has been deployed on mobile search. Using structured data markup, users can now get Google Image Search to display video and recipe data results.

According to Aaron Bradley who posted on Google+, the feature seemed to be a derivative of the new supported schema around the images. In particular, a user can now mark up their video to be accessible in image search results.

A line has been revised on Google’s guide, which reads:

“Your video rich results can also display in image search on mobile devices, providing users with useful information about your video.”

Aaron Bradley may have been the first to notice this feature. He says that the way it works is by including a link to a related video after opening an image. Aaron documented how this shows in the search results, and shared screenshots which showed both recipe data and videos showing in image search results.

You can be able to replicate this as follows:

Go to Google on your mobile device, do a search for a keyword and then click on the image results. Then tap on some of the images to see the details.

If you click on an image result which has an associated video, it reverts a card with the video details and a “Watch” prompt button. The video will now launch in the YouTube app after clicking the ‘Watch’ button on Android.

However, videos not on YouTube have thus far not been seen in image search results, even with the correct markup. The documentation provided by Google on video markup does not mention anything about not including videos, not on YouTube. There seems to be no apparent reason for the non-YouTube videos to be ineligible for the rich image search result.