Short Videos To Overtake Web Stories In Google Search?

There is some speculation, and for good reason, that Google is showing more short videos over showing web stories in Google mobile search. Glenn Gabe and Brodie Clark both noticed this trend and the two of them follow web stories closer than almost anyone else I know.

As a reminder, short videos first debuted in November 2020 and started to add sources of short video content beyond YouTube, also Instagram and TikTok and Facebook video – we’ve even seen them tested on desktop.

Web stories have been around for a similar time, but started really as AMP Stories in 2018 and then Visual stories in 2019 and now web stories since then. Just a few months ago we saw Web stories showing for competitive key phrases.

But like I said above, there are signs that short videos will replace them in the long term. Glenn Gabe wrote on Twitter “Look out Web Stories, a Short Videos carousel is now ranking for various celebrity names.” Brodie Clark added “Looks like short videos are starting to appear more often. I saw a case where both short videos/visual stories were on the same SERP – both were ranking quite high also.” “this is the first time I’ve seen it in that format (almost like it will overtake the Visual Stories SERP feature at some point),” Glenn Gabe added.

Web stories are a bit of a pain to create – so should you continue to invest in them? I guess time will tell?

Here are those tweets:

To clarify, not really a carousel, more of a SERP feature (similar to the Visual Stories SERP feature). You can view 4 short videos by default and click “more videos” to view an additional set of short videos. Here is the expanded list of short videos. pic.twitter.com/h5jsnm22kN

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) May 4, 2022

Right, I know about the short videos testing. But this is the first time I’ve seen it in that format (almost like it will overtake the Visual Stories SERP feature at some point). Wouldn’t shock me at all. There’s a lot more inventory. 🙂

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) May 4, 2022

Right, and we also know how hard it is to produce high quality Web Stories. When done right, and for the right topics, they can be great. But it’s a process to develop them. Short videos are much different on that front. Not saying they are easy, but definitely easier. 🙂

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) May 4, 2022

Forum discussion at Twitter.