In another move related to keeping users on Google properties, the search engine is now showing big embedded YouTube videos on the top of search results for a lot of song queries.
For example, if you search for “flaming lips turning violent,” you get something that looks like this:
Google is often criticized for doing things to prevent users from clicking over to third-party sites, and a settlement in Europe has the company adding prominent links to competitors at the top of search results on some styles of queries. Still, Google is making moves like this, and removing competitor links from stock searches.
Google isn’t showing only YouTube videos for these music queries, however. A search for the NSFW video for The Flaming Lips’ “You Lust” returns a similar style result with a Vimeo video, though it doesn’t actually have the video embedded.
It’s worth noting that this video likely doesn’t appear on YouTube due to its graphic nature, and that Google recognizes that enough to put the Vimeo link in the box, while still including a link to an audio-only YouTube video for the song in the organic results (which includes links to buy the track on Google Play, Amazon or iTunes).
It’s interesting that Google assumes that you are looking for a video for the song you’re searching for, even if you don’t use “video” in your query. It’s so confident that’s what you’re looking for these video results completely dwarf other relevant results on the page (like lyrics, articles about the song, etc.).
Images via Google
H/T: SearchEngineWatch