Google Search updated to show music videos prominently in results

Love your music videos? Google has a tweak up its sleeve for you. Now when you search for a song that’s been playing in your head, Google Search will throw up a huge card that displays a YouTube video of the song for you to view.

Search Engine Watch reported that Google has now taken to using large Google Now style cards to push YouTube video links when users search for particular songs. While it is not necessary that every song you search for will have a music video, Google will show you links to even audio-only YouTube music videos, so you need not go on to a music streaming website.

Of course, you will not be able to play the song right inside the card, and watch the video on a smaller screen, despite the fact that it has a play button right in it. You will, however, be able to click on it and let it take you to the YouTube page.

The search results will mainly show your results from official artiste pages and even from VEVO, but clearly the art hasn’t been perfected by Google Search as we’re being able to see results from general users too. The best part about this Search tweak is that you need not add “video” as a keyword to your search query to trigger this card. In fact the larger card with the video does not appear when you use the word “video”. You need to merely type in the name of the song.

“This was already available in September 2013 when you searched for an artist and then clicked on a song – you’d see a preview of the music video if it was available to display,” said a Google Spokesperson. “Yesterday we made it easier to get to – you can now just search for a song directly and see the video screenshot right away.”

According to the company, while most of the links being displayed are from YouTube, other sources of music videos like Vimeo, Dailymotion and more are being put to use too for some results. Of course, it would be obvious that Youtube being a Google product will get far more footage on the Search results.

Despite the rise of music streaming services like Spotify and Rdio, YouTube has maintained its position as one of the top destinations for users to simply listen to some music. YouTube has a lot more going on for it than the random cat videos. With this Google Search push, YouTube’s ever-increasing popularity will only end up getting a push.