Google has introduced a new feature called “Key Moments” in their Google search results, which is designed to help people find the exact point in a video that relates to their search. This new feature could be hugely beneficial in helping your videos dominate Google's search results, so please continue reading for more details.

Over the past few years, Google has been displaying videos more and more prominently in their search results. Particularly when people are searching for "How To" content, videos are often much more effective in answering questions than standard articles or blog entries. This new Key Moments feature will help organize and display videos more prominently in search, and will help people understand exactly what portions of a video are relevant to their search.

The way Key Moments works is by scanning the timestamps that YouTube channels post in their video descriptions, which can help direct viewers to specific portions of a video with hyperlinks. You may have seen YouTube videos with timestamped links in the description field or in pinned comments below the video, and that's exactly what Google leverages to drive search traffic to the specific portion of a video that's most relevant to their search. Here's what timestamps look like:

As Google rolls out Key Moments over the coming weeks, you may see links display underneath a video in Google search which direct viewers to the exact points in the video in which these Key Moments appear. Key Moments will allow viewers to quickly scan through the video before clicking it to see the highlights of the video, and to get a general feel for what content the video includes.

Google is the most widely used search engine in the world (with YouTube.com coming in as #2), so the potential to get your videos in front of a wider audience with Key Moments is massive. In order to maximize the chance of your YouTube videos showing up in Google search results, we strongly advise you to start including timestamps in the description of your videos.

We'll keep you posted as we learn more about the new Key Moments feature, and as always, reach out to us if you have any questions!

IMPORTANT: As of April 10, 2020, it appears that Key Moments only work if your first timestamp is listed as 0:00, so we recommend always starting your timestamp library with something like the following:

0:00 - Introduction