Let’s talk about Videos, SEO and the strangest message you may encounter on Google Search Console:
“Google could not determine the prominent video on the page”
I got this message for one of my clients site at the beginning of the month.
The page with the issue was a glossary page which we identified as having high potential in terms of rankings and traffic (due to high search intent relevancy).
As part of the on page optimization and content revamp, I decided to search for a relevant video that will supplement our content, found one and added it under the relevant section.
A few days after the not-very-clear message by Google came in.
I looked at Google’s recommendations on how to fix this issue and this is what they say:
“We recommend fixing other issues before fixing this one. In some cases, this issue might be caused by rendering issues in Googlebot, so you might not be able to fix it, but you should ensure that the video is reasonably prominent on your page.
Try using the URL Inspection report’s live test on your page and examine the screenshot to see the page as Google sees it.”
A bit funny, don’t you think?
I mean – which other issues should I fix? I didn’t get any message on other issues but this one!
Ho, and also, I may not be able to fix it as it “might be caused by rendering issues in Googlebot”…? WTF?
I was about to forget all about it, cataloging it as another bug of GSC, but then the sentence saying “you should ensure that the video is reasonably prominent on your page” caught my attention and I decided to put it to the test:
I moved the video to a higher (yet still relevant) section on the page and added a short description right before embedding it.
Important thing to note is that the rankings dropped tremendously the day we got this message – for the singular version it dropped 10 positions but the plural version was completely lost from the search engine results page(!!!)
Today we got another message saying our fix was successful and ta dah!
The page is now ranking higher than before 🙂
Conclusions
Always put thing to the testNever underestimate google search console
It’s a great tool and even with its many flaws it is still one of the most accurate tools you can use for understanding your site performance
