Does video help companies show up in AI search?
Yes, but it depends on how you embed it. Meg Dalessandro of Wistia says the wrong embed makes your video invisible to AI, while the right one feeds AI the...
Yes, but it depends on how you embed it. Meg Dalessandro of Wistia says the wrong embed makes your video invisible to AI, while the right one feeds AI the transcript it needs to surface your video.
Quick Answer
- Video helps with AI search, but only if AI can read it.
- A classic embed (like a pasted YouTube video) looks like a "black box" to an AI crawler, which can only read the link text.
- LLM-friendly embeds add the transcript into the embed code so AI can understand and surface the video.
Why the embed type decides everything
Meg's answer to "does video help in AI search" starts with a caveat: it depends on the embed. A standard embed gives the crawler almost nothing to work with.
"The robot or the AI is really just seeing that as like a black box, because all it can read is the link text. And usually your link text is a bunch of random letters and words." — Meg Dalessandro
The fix is to give the AI the actual content of the video. That's what Wistia's LLM-friendly embeds do.
"It actually adds the transcript of your video into that embed code so that it's giving more information to the AI, so it can actually adequately surface it up in different results or categorize it in different ways that'll actually get your video seen on those platforms." — Meg Dalessandro
So the video itself isn't the deciding factor. The deciding factor is whether the AI can read what's inside it.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why can't AI "see" a normal embedded video?
Because a classic embed only exposes link text to a crawler. Meg Dalessandro says that looks like a "black box," with no information about what the video actually contains.
How do LLM-friendly embeds change that?
They insert the video's transcript into the embed code. That gives AI the words spoken in the video, so it can categorize and surface the video in search results.
Does this mean any video helps with AI search?
No. Meg says it depends on how you use video and which embed you choose. Without a readable transcript, the video adds little for AI search.
Watch the full interview
Meg Dalessandro and Dane Frederiksen go deeper on video-first content and AI search in the full interview.
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Watch the full interview with Meg Dalessandro or jump straight to the YouTube video.