As Google expanded its video mode guidelines and GSC is reporting “Video is not the main content of the page,” I have observed a strange but interesting behavior.
In this case, the embedded YouTube video is placed in the rendered area for two separate pages. However, on one page, the video is considered as the main content, while on the other, it is flagged with the error that the video is not the main content.
The only difference on the page, which considers the video as main content, includes the word “video” in both the title and the URL.
Then, I analyzed the data about indexed video pages. The same pattern is there. All the pages that have the word “video” in the title and URL slug are present in this report.
Furthermore, I conducted some more testing and found the following scenarios:
Scenario 1: If “video” is in the title and URL, and there is no age restriction, then it is considered as the main content.
Scenario 2: If “video” is in the title and not in the URL, and there is no age restriction, then it is not considered as the main content.
Scenario 3: If “video” is in the title and URL, and there is an age restriction, then it is not considered as the main content.
Those who are facing this issue can test these scenarios and share their use cases in the same thread.