Philipp, I have mentioned the UI design when clicking the + box to watch a movie and the most interesting thing was that metacafe.com are taking advantage of their Google search results instead of youtube or google video.

I do believe that UI design will work for music, video and video news :) right Google ?

Philipp Lenssen back again.

Google promoting his service at his search engine fair or not? Hard to answer, I think it is reasonable, everyone will do this way.

Who will give the competitores the free promotions? Fool?

But Google machine can not know that Google blogoscoped is Google's friend. Google should improve a tech to judge it. Haha.

You gave your content to Google by uploading it to YouTube though. Isn't it Google's content now?

CJ, as we know, Google Video and YouTube host an abundance of material that is not owned by whoever uploaded it it (and Google Inc is even protected by the Digital Millenium's Copyright act's safe harbor provision...). Even so, why not display a thumbnail for a blog-hosted WMV video file as well?

Philipp, it is a good thought...., but

- you really think this is getting clicked more than the 3rd result? in fact it was 3rd because the 1st one was more relevant, so google DID determine which one was more relevant (the original). + a search engine never can be fair, since then it would have to have perfect results....

-but more importantly, the ideal google would also show a thumbnail of the wmv file. And I do not just think the ideal google we wish, but also the ideal google which google dreams of. If they want to show all the worlds information as good as possible, then they will show a preview....

can you blame them for not having that feature yet? totally no, especially if they even included metacafé

When I do that exact same search Philipp – I am getting thumbnails next the first two results (Google Blogoscoped).

Here is the screen pic:

http://picasaweb.google.com/dberglind/Blogoscoped/photo#5067758328103594626

Their strategy has clearly been altered in the past two and a half years, but it's not something I necessarily have a problem with. Really, the crux of their strategy has always been this part of what you quoted: "We want you to come to Google and quickly find what you want." Can you deny that this method is quicker for the user?

At the same time, I'd expect Google to start indexing all video found on the net soon, a true video search, and then you'll get what you had wanted. The trick is to build up YouTube like functionality around any video found in its native habitat – comments, favorites, etc.

> When I do that exact same search Philipp – I am getting
> thumbnails next the first two results

Dave, is it possible you have a third-party Firefox extension installed called "GooglePreview"?

I am trying to figure out how to have a video thumbnail come up for my site. I have a video on my site, and am in a high position in Google, but no video thumbnail.

I don't suppose there are any meta tags for them indexing a thumbnail in their search results??

That does seem a little biased to me. Individual sites like mine not on YouTube, Metacafe or Google Video (my video is on Google video but NOT recognized in the search results in correlation with my site) have a distinct disadvantage.

Case in point, I am higher than the 2 sites with videos shown below me in Googles ranking. But those videos are so eye drawing that I have noticed my traffic literally drop in half in the last few days.

I'd like to see a meta-tag of some sort offering a way for individual sites to have their own thumbnail pop up for their sites. That seems fair to me.

Maybe I am missing something??

> you really think this is getting clicked more than the 3rd result?

I'm not sure it's getting clicked more in absolute numbers, but if we look at Robert's report above, at least a number of clicks seem to shift from the top result to a lower result due to the thumbnail...

> I'd like to see a meta-tag of some sort offering a way
> for individual sites to have their own thumbnail pop up
> for their sites.

As a thumbnail is fair use, I think Google could just go ahead and implement it for every site (without meta tag), and for the plusbox player maybe they could check if they find a Creative Commons license...? A new meta tag would be more precise but I (as webmaster) am lazy :)

>Dave, is it possible you have a third-party Firefox extension installed called >"GooglePreview"?

Your right Philipp, I do have that. Been using it for so long, I forgot that it wasn't part of the regular Google results.

while Google's recent moves in terms of policy, I am starting to lose a little bit of trust in them, but as far as the concerns you have with the thumbnail not appearing next to your search result, that's nothing to worry about.

Those 'plusboxes' are basically an embedded video clip. Think of it same way you can embed YouTube, GoogleVideo and Metacafe videos into a website.. you just click play and it starts. These sites are built for embedding, thats one of the great advantages of online video.That is not the same as a LINKED WMV file. That WMV file resides on your server as a file. To provide a thumbnail of your video to Google's search results would require an unreasonable amount of effort on Google's part. It would have to find some way to have the server automatically parse the WMV file, find a snapshot and post it. Now, if you had a flash wrapper around the file..sort of like YouTube, then yea, I could see why you'd have a problem.

David, but that's exactly what they do when I uploaded my WMV to Google Video – they create a snapshot from the WMV. In fact, it might be easier to write something that parses pages for linked video files (of say, 5 types for starters) on the same server to then extract snapshots... then it is for Google to parse a variety of video hosted sites, as they often have different ways for embedding content. For instance, Google doesn't yet support Ebaumsworld.com, one of the many video sites: http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=site%3Aebaumsworld.com+test&btnG=Search

Perhaps (a) its a matter of time, or (b) a question of licensing fees (would G need to pay MSFT feeds to manipulate WMV's in the manner described?)?

Elinor Mills of CNet questioned Google on this post (in particular "By integrating full videos from YouTube, they expand the scope of copyright problems YouTube faces right into the Google search results, and also break with their old motto of sending users away as fast as possible."), and here are the comments from a Google spokesperson:

<<The videos that appear as a Plus Box feature on the Google results page are automatically chosen by our computers, based on which videos appear to be most relevant and useful to the searcher – considering the particular search that was conducted.

At this time, there are no plans to use the Plus Box feature for other online video providers, but we hope to get more providers to participate in the future.

The integration of video results in search is part of the vision (which we described back in January: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2007/01/look-ahead-at-google-video-and-youtube.html) to help users search for the world's online video content, irrespective of where it may be hosted:.

Regarding copyright in particular, if a copyright holder notifies us that someone has put their work on YouTube or Google Video without their authorization, we will take the video down immediately, in accordance with the law (the Digital Millennium Copyright Act). When a video is removed from YouTube or Google Video, it will no longer appear in Google search PlusBoxes.>>

[Thanks Elinor!]

Simple Solution:
Stop using Microsoft and Apple file formats like WMV and MP4.

I am sure google would be more than willing to add this feature to their search results IF they did not have to deal with money grubbing corperate accountants.

Use Ogg Vorbis or XviD, and then request that google add the feature. That way everybody wins. (Except MS and Apple, but who cares)

Did you try turning off external embedding of the video in google video?

I am pretty sure this will solve the said problem.

And I don't expect google to import each and every wmv link it finds on the web, convert it to flv format, and create a thumbnail of it.

Also I doubt google will allow site owners to choose what video thumbnail will appear next to their result – It's hard enough to control the text that appears in the google result.

Hi

I noticed that a websearch on "web 2.0 star" includes a link to a metacafe video, and it even has a nice little thumbnail to go with it. I've never seen this before except for youtube/googlevideo content.

Rico