Google announced it now supports live streams with indexing API and structured data, meaning you’re now able to ‘tell’ Google when your video is live, and it will be eligible to appear more prominently in search results with a red “live” badge.
https://webmasters.googleblog.com/2018/12/introducing-indexing-api-and-structured.html
For those of you not familiar with structured data, it is basically tool that enables you to tell Google what your content is and how they should treat it. In this example, to tell Google that your video is a live stream so that they can give a ‘live’ badge to video thumbnails in search results.
As for the Indexing API, Google has opened up its Indexing API for live content as a way to accelerate the crawling and indexing process (as live content is real-time, and thus can’t wait in line to be indexed). In a nutshell, it means that Google will crawl your livestream content faster.
Why Should You Care?
This is a great way to get more exposure in Google Search and Google Assistant, which is always exciting. As a result, it’s also an added incentive to create live content (as this content will be given special treatment that other content won’t get).
It’s also a possible hat tip to the growing ‘live’ trend in digital marketing; one which has been embraced by almost all major social media platforms (Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, Snapchat etc.). For content marketers, live streaming is probably something to look into as we move into 2019.
You can read Google’s official announcement about live videos and how it will boost them here.
Tags: Assistant, google, Live stream, structured data
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About Steph Von der Heyde
Our resident wordsmith’s love of digital lured her over from advertising to the online space, where she fell in love with content marketing. Since coming to the online world Steph has made her mark on all outgoing CleverClicks copy and is passionate about using words to build brands. Her obsession with the writing is rivaled only by her love of trail running, yoga and green juice. When she’s not submerged in content strategy you’ll find Steph in Downward Dog.