Greetings WOW members and Web professionals everywhere. Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute. Today?’s podcast is a continuation on the topic of Search.

For today?’s podcast, I am on the phone with Rebecca Lieb, Advisor to the the ClickZ Network, Author and Consultant. Rebecca recently moderated a conference panel on the topic of “The Next Wave For Online Video”. In this interview, Rebecca shares her tips on how to navigate the new wave of online video, as more people are watching, sharing, and finding videos online. Rebecca also discusses the issues with video search, and the industry’s desire for standards on how to tag, organize, and find videos and a look ahead into the future of online video search as well.

Check out the four minute interview on today’s WOW Technology Minute website.

Today’s podcast is sponsored by the Webmaster Survival Guide. Check out all of the great resources and links on the Webmaster Survival Guide website.

Transcript Interview on Video Search with Rebecca Lieb and Bill Cullifer

BILL CULLIFER: Greetings WOW members and Web professionals everywhere. Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute. Today?’s podcast is a continuation on the topic of Search. I?’m pleased to be on the phone interviewing Rebecca Lieb, and advisor for the ClickZ Network, an author and a consultant and often sought-after speaker and moderator for a variety of conferences. She just participated in the SES Conference in San Jose where she moderated a panel on “The Next Wave for Online Video,” a session that provided tips on how to navigate the new wave of online video and also best practices and standards on how to tag, organize and find videos.

Rebecca, can you summarize that session for us?

REBECCA LIEB: Absolutely. There are a couple of different elements to video search. I think the predominant issue today, and we can talk about the next wave stuff in a minute, is that search engines are like what search engine optimizers are fond of calling big, dumb, ugly pages. Search engines still understand text on a page better than they understand video or video content. They can?’t do voice or text recognition, so if I?’m talking to you in this podcast search engines don?’t know what I?’m saying or what you?’re saying. They don?’t recognize the images in a video.

So when you?’re optimizing video for search what?’s really important is the title of the video, the meta data surrounding the video file that describes a little bit about what?’s in the video and then some accompanying elements on the page. It?’s always a good idea to have thumbnails, for example, of video, so that people get that immediate sense and are encouraged to click through to the video file.

But in terms of actually searching for and finding video, words are the most important thing there is. So if you were to, say if this were a videocast rather than a podcast, you would want to put my name in, you would want to put your name in and you?’d want to put in plenty of descriptive text about what we?’re discussing, how to optimize video for search. We?’re talking about the meta data in the video file itself, which the search engines can read. We?’re talking about the title of the video. But search engines are also very good at figuring out content in adjacency. So what?’s also important is the text that you would have on the webpage surrounding the invitation to click through and view a video. So more description, more elucidation of what?’s in the video and what the viewer can expect.

Now if you really want to make a video findable, and if the video contains a lot of dialogue, say it?’s an interview like this or it?’s a news clip, like let?’s say Sarah Palin and Katie Couric, you can also include a transcript of the text that?’s being discussed in the video. That makes things eminently searchable. Transcription makes the video much more searchable and much more findable.

There are projects in development that are pretty next wave and cool. For example, facial recognition technology. So one day in the future, theoretically, you can search for videos of somebody like Brittany Spears, and even if that video isn?’t tagged “Brittany Spears” in any text-based format, the search engines are supposed to recognize and shoot you over to Brittany Spears videos based on picking Brittany out of the face in the crowd.

I think video search has actually been lurking in the background for longer than people who work for solely on the Web think. I think it was five or six years ago that PBS commissioned a survey to figure out how people search program guides, for example, on various digital television platforms and interactive television platforms. You can think of the multi-channel television universe as a corollary. How do you search through literally thousands of programs? For people who are listening who have TiVo they might be familiar with some of these interfaces. Searching for programming, movies that star Harrison Ford for example, that?’s search.

My best advice for today and the foreseeable future is tag and transcribe and describe as much as possible in lame, dumb, ugly, old-fashioned text.

BILL: Anything else that also took place at Search that might give the listeners an understanding of trends in the search world these days?

REBECCA: I think a major trend, perhaps the major trend in search right now that affects video as well as a lot of other multimedia on the Web is universal search. The three major search engines, Google, Yahoo and MSN have begun including in the search results new search, video search, book search. So this makes tagging video all the more important because you?’ve actually got a shot now, which you didn?’t have a year ago, of showing up on Google?’s homepage if you?’ve got a video hosted on YouTube, or even hosted on your website, that?’s relevant to a searcher?’s query.

BILL: Wow, very relevant. I appreciate that.

Greetings WOW members and Web professionals everywhere. Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute. Today?’s podcast is a continuation on the topic of Search.

For today?’s podcast, I am on the phone with Rebecca Lieb, Advisor to the the ClickZ Network, Author and Consultant. Rebecca recently moderated a conference panel on the topic of “The Next Wave For Online Video”. In this interview, Rebecca shares her tips on how to navigate the new wave of online video, as more people are watching, sharing, and finding videos online. Rebecca also discusses the issues with video search, and the industry’s desire for standards on how to tag, organize, and find videos and a look ahead into the future of online video search as well.

Check out the four minute interview on today’s WOW Technology Minute website.

Today’s podcast is sponsored by the Webmaster Survival Guide. Check out all of the great resources and links on the Webmaster Survival Guide website.

Transcript Interview on Video Search with Rebecca Lieb and Bill Cullifer

BILL CULLIFER: Greetings WOW members and Web professionals everywhere. Bill Cullifer here with the World Organization of Webmasters (WOW) and the WOW Technology Minute. Today?’s podcast is a continuation on the topic of Search. I?’m pleased to be on the phone interviewing Rebecca Lieb, and advisor for the ClickZ Network, an author and a consultant and often sought-after speaker and moderator for a variety of conferences. She just participated in the SES Conference in San Jose where she moderated a panel on “The Next Wave for Online Video,” a session that provided tips on how to navigate the new wave of online video and also best practices and standards on how to tag, organize and find videos.

Rebecca, can you summarize that session for us?

REBECCA LIEB: Absolutely. There are a couple of different elements to video search. I think the predominant issue today, and we can talk about the next wave stuff in a minute, is that search engines are like what search engine optimizers are fond of calling big, dumb, ugly pages. Search engines still understand text on a page better than they understand video or video content. They can?’t do voice or text recognition, so if I?’m talking to you in this podcast search engines don?’t know what I?’m saying or what you?’re saying. They don?’t recognize the images in a video.

So when you?’re optimizing video for search what?’s really important is the title of the video, the meta data surrounding the video file that describes a little bit about what?’s in the video and then some accompanying elements on the page. It?’s always a good idea to have thumbnails, for example, of video, so that people get that immediate sense and are encouraged to click through to the video file.

But in terms of actually searching for and finding video, words are the most important thing there is. So if you were to, say if this were a videocast rather than a podcast, you would want to put my name in, you would want to put your name in and you?’d want to put in plenty of descriptive text about what we?’re discussing, how to optimize video for search. We?’re talking about the meta data in the video file itself, which the search engines can read. We?’re talking about the title of the video. But search engines are also very good at figuring out content in adjacency. So what?’s also important is the text that you would have on the webpage surrounding the invitation to click through and view a video. So more description, more elucidation of what?’s in the video and what the viewer can expect.

Now if you really want to make a video findable, and if the video contains a lot of dialogue, say it?’s an interview like this or it?’s a news clip, like let?’s say Sarah Palin and Katie Couric, you can also include a transcript of the text that?’s being discussed in the video. That makes things eminently searchable. Transcription makes the video much more searchable and much more findable.

There are projects in development that are pretty next wave and cool. For example, facial recognition technology. So one day in the future, theoretically, you can search for videos of somebody like Brittany Spears, and even if that video isn?’t tagged “Brittany Spears” in any text-based format, the search engines are supposed to recognize and shoot you over to Brittany Spears videos based on picking Brittany out of the face in the crowd.

I think video search has actually been lurking in the background for longer than people who work for solely on the Web think. I think it was five or six years ago that PBS commissioned a survey to figure out how people search program guides, for example, on various digital television platforms and interactive television platforms. You can think of the multi-channel television universe as a corollary. How do you search through literally thousands of programs? For people who are listening who have TiVo they might be familiar with some of these interfaces. Searching for programming, movies that star Harrison Ford for example, that?’s search.

My best advice for today and the foreseeable future is tag and transcribe and describe as much as possible in lame, dumb, ugly, old-fashioned text.

BILL: Anything else that also took place at Search that might give the listeners an understanding of trends in the search world these days?

REBECCA: I think a major trend, perhaps the major trend in search right now that affects video as well as a lot of other multimedia on the Web is universal search. The three major search engines, Google, Yahoo and MSN have begun including in the search results new search, video search, book search. So this makes tagging video all the more important because you?’ve actually got a shot now, which you didn?’t have a year ago, of showing up on Google?’s homepage if you?’ve got a video hosted on YouTube, or even hosted on your website, that?’s relevant to a searcher?’s query.

BILL: Wow, very relevant. I appreciate that.