Google is testing a new feature that will display Instagram and TikTok videos in a dedicated carousel in the Google app for mobile devices. This could help the company prevent users looking for social video entertainment from leaving the Google platform entirely. The function itself is expanded during a test Launched earlier this year, Here, Google had introduced a carousel with “short videos” for the first time Google Discover – The personalized feed in the Google mobile app and on some Android devices to the left of the home screen.
This “Short Videos” carousel is different from Google’s Stories rolls in October 2020 for the Google Search App for iOS and Android. These “Stories” – formerly known as the “AMP Stories” – are short-form video content created by Google’s online publishing partners including Forbes, USA Today, Vice, Now This, Bustle, Thrillist, and others.
Meanwhile the carousel “Short Videos” had been concentrated Consolidation of social videos from other platforms, including Google’s own short-form video project Tangi, the Indian TikTok competitor Trell and Google’s own video platform YouTube, which has recently started experimenting with short-form content.
The addition of Instagram and TikTok content to this carousel was first reported by Round table for search engines (about Brian Free Life’s tweet). You could access the feature by searching for “packers” in the Google app and then scrolling down the page.
We could repeat this too. (See picture below.)
Credit: Screenshot of Google search results
We noticed that the short video carousel appears when you scroll over the Google Knowledge Base box for the Green Bay Packers, followed by the results, top stories, twitter results, top results, pictures, videos, and other content , e.g. B. a list of players, leaderboard and more.
Both Instagram and TikTok videos were available on the Short Videos row. Clicking on that takes you to the web version of the social platform – not the native mobile app, even if it’s installed on your device. The bottom line is that Google users are more likely to stick with Google because all they have to do is tap the back arrow to return to search results after watching the video.
Google has indexed video content for years and has partnered with Twitter to index search results since 2015. However, it is not clear to what extent there is a formal relationship with Facebook / Instagram or TikTok. (If these companies leave a comment, we’ll update it.)
Google declined to officially comment or elaborate on its plans, but a company spokesperson confirmed to ProWellTech that the feature is currently being tested on mobile devices. They made it clear that this is a limited early-stage feature. In other words, you won’t find the video carousel every time you search. Over time, as the product scales, Google could become an interesting tool for indexing and uncovering top social media video content – unless of course the platforms choose to prevent Google from doing so.
The function is currently only available to a limited extent in the Google app for mobile devices and on the mobile web.