Can Google index the captions on videos?

[tarantino75]

With MUM and everything that it entails coming along, do we know if Google can index captions on video? I know we spend time and budget getting the video content transcribed and for caption files.

Thoughts on this?

 

[Justin Mosebach]

On YouTube videos: definitely. See this part of an Ahrefs blog about video SEO.

On other videos: I would recommend doing that for several reasons, including:

• Helping people watch the video who either have their phone muted (ex. in an office) or who can't hear well.
• Repurposing the content from the transcript to create other content (ex. blog post).
• Future-proofing for when Google/Bing/DuckDuckGo do index them (if they don't already - again, Google definitely does index YouTube captions).

Google's also given some guidance on video SEO:

• Get Videos on Google with Schema Markup | Search Central | Google Developers
• Video Best Practices | Google Search Central | Google Developers

While neither of those two mention captions/transcriptions specifically, that's the direction they're going, especially with "video key moments in search".

 

[tarantino75]

@Justin Mosebach Thank you for the helpful info! We'll definitely review those articles and make video a priority.