I have evidence that product videos are hurting our rankings - How do I hide them!?

[WebstaurantStore.com]

We normally rank between #1-3 for long-tail product related keywords in our industry.

Then we saw our rankings drop when we added product videos to some of our product pages.

My hypothesis was that for most ecommerce-related queries, Google has a certain aesthetic that they are going for in the SERP's. They like to show video listings somewhere in the middle of the first page.. not as one of the first 3 results.

1. Product page
2. Product page
3. Google shopping results
4. Product page
5. Video Result on product page
6. Video Result on product page
7. Product page

I did an experiment by removing the product videos from a selection of our product pages and as soon as they were reindexed w/o the video we saw an average of a 3 spot jump in rankings!

Since the product videos have actually helped on-site conversion rate.. we'd like to keep them on the product pages but hide them from being indexed by Google.

Is there a safe way to do this? Is it possible to use an i-frame, or will Google still see the video on the page and index it as such.

Thanks for any advice!

[Mark_Jay_Apsey_Jr.]

are the videos identical to other videos that are being used by other people?

Did you give them a unique title?

Do you have the videos on youtube?

[WebstaurantStore.com]

We created the videos ourselves and are self-hosting.

All videos have a unique title

[rightmove]

I would try a little experiment and try hosting a video on youtube and linking to it. I have seen videos on youtube in the past get a preference and it may work for you instead of self hosting.

Even if it's against your business model to use youtube, the experiment would be wonderful for the community to see if your listings would be affected with a self hosted or YT hosted video

[PhilNottingham]

Hi Charlie,

so - first of all, are you actually losing any traffic as a result of lower rankings? More often than not, while video results may appear lower down in the page to fit in with an aesthetic model - they get a higher click through rate. If you are retaining or increasing overall traffic for those keywords in-spite of lower rankings, then you are actually in a better position than you were before.

The reason for wanting to get higher up in the SERPs is to get more traffic, but if you can get high click through's in 5th with a video than in 1st without - then 5th position is more beneficial. This feels counter-intuitive, but with the expansion of rich snippets and personalised search - we need to start thinking much wider than just rankings. Rankings are only as good as the traffic they provide.

If you are desperate to lose the video rich snippets (which feels like it would be a step backwards), then you could try one of a few things:

• As you mention, use an Iframe to embed. Google probably wont index it (though it's not unheard of!)
• Hide the video with CSS and then have it appear in a lightbox player with a JS trigger.
• Put the video on a separate page and aim to get two results for the same term (one video and one non-video). NB - this is basically self cannibalisation and could backfire, so I wouldn't recommend it, but it might be worth a try.

Google are doing a lot of tests at the moment and are shifting things around in the SERPs based on rich snippets and content type as much as "relevancy". The model of "higher up = better" doesn't really apply any more and so, in your position i would be inclined to hold tight and see where things go in the next few months. If you're getting product video rich snippets, you're probably in a good position and building more links to the pages may help them to appear higher up and with the rich snippets. Its really not clear how things will end up looking in the not too distant future and I would advise against taking a short term strategy to increase rankings if you're not actually losing a significant amount of traffic.

Hope that's helpful,

Phil