Google's Video Thumbnail Changes: Impact on SERPs and Click-Through Rates

On April 13, Google announced a change to how video thumbnails would be presented in the search results. Until now, a listing could receive a video thumbnail even when that video content was not the main content on the page. Although that was a nice benefit for the sites receiving the video thumbnail, it was often confusing for users. For example, they might click through looking for a video, but the video might be way down the page (and might just be supporting content and not cover the core point of the page).

NO MORE VIDEO THUMBNAILS = GIANT DROPS

Therefore, Google decided to remove video thumbnails for pages where the video is not the main content. And they weren't kidding. I am now seeing massive drops in video thumbnails across a number of sites starting on 4/13. I'm not referring to small drops here and there. I mean near-complete drops in the number of video thumbnails being presented for those sites.

And I'm not saying this is a bug or wrong. The video content for those pages isn't the main content, so the system is working as intended.

GSC CLICK DROP FOR VIDEO THUMBNAILS

We’re seeing huge drops in GSC for clicks from pages that used to receive video thumbnails. Note, this doesn't mean traffic is down.

Important: A drop in video snippets doesn't mean a drop in traffic: Just because a video thumbnail is removed doesn't mean traffic will drop. Sure, video thumbnails can impact the SERPs' click-through rate, but rankings aren't impacted at all with this change. It's just about the SERP treatment. Traffic for these sites has remained stable, although I still need to dig into the CTR data to see the impact.

Of course, that's tricky since some of the content I'm reviewing is news-oriented (where CTR will be much higher at certain times than others). Anyway, I'll post more about the impact to CTR and clicks after digging in more.

VIDEO VS. IMAGE THUMBNAILS IN GOOGLE

Also, Google is sometimes replacing the video thumbnails with image thumbnails. 

When that happens, CTR could even go up... There is still special SERP treatment with the image being displayed, but it doesn't have the play arrow overlaid on the image thumbnail. Again, I'll need to dig into the data to see if there are any significant changes in CTR based on these changes.

VIDEO THUMBNAILS IN TOP STORIES

Video thumbnails in Top Stories, spared or overlooked? I also wanted to mention that Top Stories seems to be treated differently based on this change from Google. I am still seeing video thumbnails show up in Top Stories when the video is NOT the main content on the page. So this is either by design, or it was overlooked by Google when implementing the video thumbnail changes. Time will tell if the video thumbnails remain. I'll post an update if anything changes on that front.

VIDEO THUMBNAIL APOCALYPSE?

Check your stats based on the video thumbnail apocalypse (but don't freak out). SERP features and rich snippets can definitely impact click-through rate from the search results, so big changes like removing video thumbnails can cause issues for some sites.