How to Get Video/Image Thumbnails in Google Search Results
Image thumbnails have been displaying in Google SERPs for some time. I’ve sure you’ve seen them every once in a while during your average search on Google. Usually, these thumbnails will only display for Youtube or Google Video results. Strangely, these image thumbnails have been showing for many other sites, including popular blogs and several other video hosting sites, including Vimeo and Metacafe. However, I’ve been seeing the video image thumbnails for some sites that don’t have video embedded, but rather a single image. See below:
Image Thumbnail in Google SERPs
Here’s another, less short tail, cooler looking result.
The Image Thumbnail Grabs Attention
Do you know how to get video / image thumbnails in Google SERPs?
I am testing out a few theories now, but they’re still just theoretical. Like the above results, I’ve had some early success, but have found that results aren’t entirely replicable. If you have inside info, leave me a note. Here are some of my early thoughts and observations:
- Rel=”thumbnail” could be entered in <a> tag around an <img> tag. Doesn’t always ensure display in Google SERPs, but makes you feel thorough. I’ve seen image thumbnails show for pages that do this, and pages that don’t.
- Host a few crawl-able videos on your site. Embed some. May alert Google’s Engine that your pages are more important and video-related. Still unknown.
- Image dimensions should be similar to Video dimensions. 3 by 2. 5 by 4. Should look like a video for Google SERPs to say it’s a video, right? Still unverified, of course.
- Relevancy. For instance, an image thumbnail doesn’t display for the keywords “makeover west hollywood jealous” even though it does for “qmania makeover“. Although every combination I can think of for “hang in there jack coupon” gets the image to display next to that blog post. I’m unsure how to resolve or predict on this tip. Any ideas how to associate relevance better, related to getting a thumbnail to display?
Thanks y’all! Contribute and spread this post to your friends who’d be able to help. Thanks again.
Glenn Friesen is a faculty member at Santa Barbara Business College. He has a passion for SEO, marketing, digital culture, international business, and wine. Follow his work at http://twitter.com/glennisaac
David and Glenn - mid-1980's Alaska
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I’m disgusted by the automated bots that link build like this. Releasing such spam is embarrassing to true internet marketing professionals.
I approved the comment just to illustrate the stupidity of the automated comment…
I’ve done a lot of VSEO research on thumbnails and I haven’t found a specific pattern for Google choosing thumbnails. Even for YouTube, Metacafe or Daily Motion, the thumbnails seem to pop up arbitrarily