Yesterday YouTube announced the launch of Insight, a free tool that enables anyone with a YouTube account to view detailed statistics about the videos that they upload to the site. Currently Insight offers a few key metrics, including a breakdown of video views by geographic location, a video’s popularity in a market relative to [...]]]>

Yesterday YouTube announced the launch of Insight, a free tool that enables anyone with a YouTube account to view detailed statistics about the videos that they upload to the site. Currently Insight offers a few key metrics, including a breakdown of video views by geographic location, a video’s popularity in a market relative to other YouTube videos, and video popularity growth rates over a given period of time. The YouTube blog post also mentions that they will be releasing more features in the near future.

I think Insight can deliver significant value to small businesses and franchise companies that make use of YouTube videos to drive traffic to their site or locations. Even the Google Analytics Team is pumped up about it. As YouTube adds more features and metrics, businesses will be better able to gauge the ROI of online video production. One metric that the YouTube blog post mentions that should be rolled out “fairly quickly” is “a specific breakdown of how viewers discovered the video.” This metric alone will offer businesses and franchises great “insight” into how to title and describe future videos, as well as, what the subject matter should be. One specific case is the use of YouTube videos in Google Local business listings. Franchise companies with numerous locations that make use of business listing videos will be able to see which listings get the most video views. Perhaps people searching for their business in California watch the videos a lot more than people searching in Florida.

Let us know what you think of Insight.

We logged into to the Google Local Business Center today to edit the listing for our search engine optimization company SEO Komodo. We were excited to see that Google now allows you to add up to 5 videos to a business listing. This feature is [...]]]> Another great reason to use YouTube for your business…

We logged into to the Google Local Business Center today to edit the listing for our search engine optimization company SEO Komodo. We were excited to see that Google now allows you to add up to 5 videos to a business listing. This feature is in the photos section of the listing editor. The videos must be on YouTube first but then it is as simple as adding the YouTube URL.

Motion pictures have existed for 100+ years. If you are not convinced of their power to shape human thought and emotion by now then I can’t help you. Your savvy competitors probably are. Why not beat them to the punch by adding a few nice videos to your Google Local business listings? When users are presented with a business listing that has video vs. one that doesn’t, guess which one gets clicked?

Video is a simple but extremely powerful medium for conveying large amounts of information in a short amount of time and with minimal effort by users. Adding video will truly engage users with your Google Local listings. With the rise of YouTube and other video based websites, businesses that could not afford TV commercials in the past are beginning to learn just how effective video can be for showcasing your location/products/services etc.

Uploading videos to YouTube is free and so is adding/editing your Google Local business listing.

If you haven’t made the jump yet give us a call.

As you can see, the search snippet is a valuable indicator of [...]]]> Google’s Matt Cutts uploaded the following video to his blog last night. In the video, Matt discusses the anatomy of a Google search result. In particular he discusses the search snippet and the many different ways that Google’s algorithm “generates” this snippet.

As you can see, the search snippet is a valuable indicator of relevancy for a searcher. It basically tells the searcher a little bit about what content is on the page in relation to their search query. As Matt mentioned, Google will sometimes generate this snippet using your page’s meta description tag or Google can pull some text from one or more areas of the page. By optimizing its meta description tags and the content on its pages, a franchise company can increase search engine traffic to its website. Including information such as an individual location’s physical address, areas served, etc. in that page’s meta description tag and body text, a searcher is much more likely to see relevant information in the snippet. Then (hopefully) they will visit your site.

Thanks to Matt for making this video.