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I've never heard of that signal before, but it is interesting. I'm guessing it's designed to reduce the visibility of pirate stream websites. However, "YouTub

I've never heard of that signal before, but it is interesting. I'm guessing it's designed to reduce the visibility of pirate stream websites. However, "YouTube gets special promotion in Google SERPs" is still an unfounded claim. There are hundreds of signals. Failing at one does not prove collusion.

ubernostrum 8y ago
Google properties, and certain special programs like new sites that use AMP, get preferred placement at the very top of the results page. This is not some sort of weird way-out-there conspiracy theory. You can test it yourself by going to Google, typing in something likely to have a video result, and observing how Google showcases a YouTube result at the top. Here's what I see, in a private/incognito tab, searching for the name of a recent popular music song and the artist, for example: https://i.imgur.com/iBSUBOV.jpg https://i.imgur.com/iBSUBOV.jpg Literally everything in that box is a link to a Google property, or to further Google searches that will promote Google properties. Below the fold (it's a large box) is a carousel of news stories about the topic, promoting Google News as a news aggregator. The actual search results don't start until below that.
- SquareWheel 8y ago
  You're talking about verticals here, but it sounded like you were accusing them of manipulating organic results. That's what I was skeptical of. It's worth mentioning though that vertical videos will pull from other sources as well. Here is an example of a vertical video result pulling from Vimeo. https://i.imgur.com/9q7HavK.png https://i.imgur.com/9q7HavK.png It's not specially hardcoded for Youtube. Youtube is just extremely popular in comparison to other video sites - especially for music queries like yours above. Re: News, Google News is their index and engine for news results but those are still links to non-Google sites.

ubernostrum 8y ago

Google properties, and certain special programs like new sites that use AMP, get preferred placement at the very top of the results page. This is not some sort of weird way-out-there conspiracy theory. You can test it yourself by going to Google, typing in something likely to have a video result, and observing how Google showcases a YouTube result at the top. Here's what I see, in a private/incognito tab, searching for the name of a recent popular music song and the artist, for example: https://i.imgur.com/iBSUBOV.jpg https://i.imgur.com/iBSUBOV.jpg Literally everything in that box is a link to a Google property, or to further Google searches that will promote Google properties. Below the fold (it's a large box) is a carousel of news stories about the topic, promoting Google News as a news aggregator. The actual search results don't start until below that.

SquareWheel 8y ago
You're talking about verticals here, but it sounded like you were accusing them of manipulating organic results. That's what I was skeptical of. It's worth mentioning though that vertical videos will pull from other sources as well. Here is an example of a vertical video result pulling from Vimeo. https://i.imgur.com/9q7HavK.png https://i.imgur.com/9q7HavK.png It's not specially hardcoded for Youtube. Youtube is just extremely popular in comparison to other video sites - especially for music queries like yours above. Re: News, Google News is their index and engine for news results but those are still links to non-Google sites.