If you’ve been served a set of YouTube videos in Google’s Search Engine Results Page, and then found that the same exact search query offers up different results when searching on YouTube, then you’re not the only one to notice it.
According to a report from Stone Temple Consulting, when Google returns several YouTube videos in the results pages, the ranking order between Google and YouTube varies 56.8 percent of the time.
Eric Enge of Stone Temple Consulting performed a deep dive on the topic to see why this was happening and what could be done about it.
Enge found that, not only did over half the time Google result have multiple YouTube videos, which rank differently on YouTube, but even when just one YouTube video is ranking in Google results, there’s a 55.2 percent chance that it isn’t going to be the first result for the same query on YouTube.
Even though Google tries matching users up with relevant content, YouTube is trying to do something different . They are trying to entertain. This is the inherent difference between Google and YouTube’s approach.
Enge’s thought on this phenomena is that various goals of each site are quite different and that each has its own KPI.
Head over to Stone Temple Consulting for the full study write-up, which takes a lengthy look into user intent between networks, advertising and the traditional YouTube value metrics, and even has detailed optimization checklists for those looking to rank on both YouTube and Google.