This literally stopped me in my tracks on my morning walk. Since the spring, Google has been rolling out a Short Video search feature alongside Web and Image search. Despite continued uncertainty, there are a few things I’m reasonably sure about. This blog post explores Google’s new search feature and what it means for your marketing strategy. 

Hint: Google Short Videos will probably impact your social media more than your website.

What is Google Short Videos?

Google Short Videos shows you short videos in response to your queries. Typically, Google pulls results from YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok. You can find the Short Videos tab next to the Images tab.

Here’s what it looks like on mobile:

Google Short Videos surprised me for two reasons.

1.  I read the biggest SEO news sites weekly and hadn’t seen a peep about this in the first 5-6 months Google had been rolling it out. Everyone has been pretty preoccupied with SGE.

2.  With Short Videos still in Beta, not everyone has access to it yet – including me until recently. The screenshot above is courtesy of my spouse who noticed it immediately upon opening Google one morning . (Yay for a spouse who is almost as nerdy about SEO as me!)

At this point, you’re probably like, “Yeah, OK. Google is adding yet another feature. Ugh. I would like to pretend this isn’t happening, please and thank you.”

I would too, especially since there are some weird problems with the Beta version of Short Videos. 

But, alas, you know I’m not going to. Instead, let’s take a look at where things stand with Short Videos, where it could go from here, and what you can do now for your marketing strategy.

What’s Google Short Videos like in Beta?

Currently, Google Short Videos is in Beta, meaning the Google team will refine it based on their findings and user feedback before rolling it out to everyone. I have no doubt that they eventually will roll it out to all users. That’s why it’s better to be on top of these changes and their implications now rather than later.

As it stands, Google Short Videos has some weird problems (at least, I see them as problems). Google says that it pulls Short Videos from Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok. I’m surprised they haven’t outright prioritized YouTube, since Google owns it. Based on my experience, though, it looks like Google is prioritizing Instagram Reels over TikTok by a wide margin. 

Takeaway 1: Optimize your content on Google- and Meta-owned platforms.

Google also seems to be roughly alphabetizing search results instead of prioritizing results based on quality and relevancy. That may not be the case for every query! But that’s what I noticed in some quick test runs of the new feature. 

What’s next for Google Short Videos?

Based on Google’s rollout of SGE (its generative AI search feature), we can assume that Google will continue to finetune Short Videos in Beta. Eventually, they’ll roll out the feature for all users. 

This feels inevitable. Google knows that Gen Z prefers social media search to Google search. They want to stay relevant.

What can you do?

It would be easy to throw up your hands at all this. I’m a firm believer, though, that as much as this may feel like a big change, pre-existing best practices will take you a long way. Social media platforms embraced SEO a while ago. Keywords have become a bigger and bigger part of Instagram and TikTok strategies. In many senses, Google is just leveraging that.

So here’s what I recommend:

• If you have capacity, add Reels to your Instagram strategy if you haven’t already.
• Use keywords in your social media videos and captions. (Get an introduction to keywords and keyword research in this blog post.)
• Keep up SEO blogging if that’s part of your marketing strategy. Blogging remains the safest bet for digital marketing in many ways.

At the end of the day, Google Short Videos is one more way to get in front of potential clients. If you’re already creating short-form video content for platforms like Instagram and TikTok, why not leverage that to rank on Google as well?

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