Google is running tests so that a special carousel called “Short Videos” is displayed on its search results page on mobile devices, which shows content from social networks such as TikTok, Instagram Reels, YouTube Shorts … among other possibilities.
Google could introduce the novelty to its mobile searches in 2021
This is the first time Google has indexed these short videos and showing them on its results page, despite running a similar test on content from Google Discover earlier this year. Now that carousel would add content from public accounts on the aforementioned platforms and others from less popular applications like Trell – TikTok’s Indian competitor – or Tangi, a TikTok-style short video project that Google is developing itself.
As seen in this screenshot shared by a user on Twitter, “Short Videos” search results appear before the rest of the text results on Google and after the sponsored search results.
If you click any of the short videos shown in the search results, it will show up on Google Open the web version of Instagram, TikTok, or any other social platform. What it does not do is open the mobile application of this social network even if the user has it installed on their mobile phone. So when you click the web browser’s back arrow, you will be returned to the Google search results page.
Google, which has been displaying content from other social networks such as Twitter since 2015, has neither confirmed that this function will be started nor announced a date for the publication of the short videos in the search results.
However, if the novelty is officially launched it would mean a major change in terms of SEO positioning in 2021 and it would be interesting to analyze how this affects the positioning of websites that also have this type of content in their Share accounts on social networks.
