In digital marketing, things can change pretty fast.
That’s why I try to constantly have my ear to the ground for you.
And what I will share today is still rumor-based. But this rumor makes sense when you look at what Google has been doing in the past with the SERPs (search engine results pages).
In case you missed it… By prioritizing the goal of getting users to stay longer on Google’s search engine, they worsened the search results.
Maybe it’s just me, but before these updates started about a year ago, I still could find what I was looking for in one go.
Today, it feels like I often need to scroll to page two or three to maybe find what I was looking for.
By making the SERPs not as straightforward anymore, they make people use Google search longer (so users see more ads).
Again, that’s because they don’t find what they search for as fast anymore.
From a pure business perspective, it’s understandable. It increases ad revenue for Google and makes shareholders happy.
Let’s translate these changes to YouTube (which is part of Google, as you probably know).
When we do that, you will understand why the rumor I am about to share is actually not that far-fetched.
It’s quite a likely future possibility.
Various YouTubers have already noted that sometimes their videos don’t have a description anymore.
So currently, YouTube may be up to something and testing around a bit.
For YouTube, and all the other social media platforms, it’s not beneficial when users leave their platform and visit an external website.
Of course, if it’s an ad that leads to an external website, that’s another story.
They can make money with that.
And one way to prevent people from leaving is by reducing the options for content creators to put in links to external websites.
For YouTube, that would be getting rid of video descriptions.
The bummer is this: It’s the place where the overworked video content producer puts their links to their offerings and websites.
And they mostly bet on “free” organic traffic. So for marketers and other businesses using organic YouTube views, there might be a big blow on the horizon.
If organic traffic from YouTube is your main traffic source to generate leads on your website.
That’s why I can’t repeat this one thing enough…
If you bet all your money and/or time on “free” organic traffic via organic social media postings, you are one platform/algorithm change away from going belly-up with your business.
I would estimate the chances of the video descriptions on YouTube going away in the near future at 75%.
I hope I’m wrong!
I wouldn’t have this number in mind if Google hadn’t made such a mess with the SERPs recently for “retention hacking” reasons.