Nothing new here, other than other voices starting to comment.

No surprises, after all, that's why g bought yt in the first place!

This is like saying shame on Disney for promoting Mickey Mouse.

You'd think after WSJ's Nov 2019 fisasco in critiquing Google Search, which was discussed at WebmasterWorld in this thread... [webmasterworld.com...] ...that the Journal would have been more careful on this one.... But they haven't been, not even close.

Unless my eyes are deceiving me or my mind is playing tricks, I think they've missed a fundamental point... They criticize Google Search for not ranking Facebook videos as high as YouTube in Google organic, but they're ignoring the fact that the bulk of Facebook is essentially a "walled garden", as it's called, not the open web, so comparing rankings of YouTube videos with those of Facebook videos is essentially not possible, at least not via organic search.

Here's the quoted excerpt from the WSJ article, just to be sure we're all talking about the same thing. My emphasis added...

Facebook and other competitors host the same videos, but engineers have made changes that effectively preference YouTube - owned by Google - over other video sources. Journal tests show YouTube usually ends up first and takes most of the slots in Google Search video carousels, prime results real estate.

The differences in YouTube search algos and whatever the Facebook algo, I'm guessing, though, are essentially irreconcilable... and if anything it's Facebook engineers who have disadvantaged how Facebook videos can rank in Google. I don't think either site has made changes to downgrade competitors' video rankings.

Here's an old Matt Cutts video from Jan 2014 that goes into why Google isn't crawling, indexing, and ranking Facebook and Twitter. While Matt's video is from six years ago, and I'm sure there have been some changes in the particulars, for the most part it seems to be still fresh in its outlook, and it describes what I see still going on now....

Are pages from social media sites ranked differently?
Matt Cutts - Jan 22, 2014
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=udqtSM-6QbQ [youtube.com]

While the logic of the WSJ article implies that it's Google engineers who've created difficulties for Facebook, as I listen to Matt I get a strong sense that it's the other way around. FB has created the complications.

As Matt explains, Google has decided from experience (and also, I'm sure, from negotiations) that there's not much to gain and a lot to loose by trying to keep a Google index of FB current, particularly when Google might be blocked at any time.

Worth noting, too... I don't remember having ever seen a Facebook video ranking in Google search. There are Bing and Vimeo videos, as well as videos from news publications, and they seem to be giving YouTube some stiff competition... on Google. Depends on your query, of course.

I'm also noticing that several writers who've been building very large reputations on Facebook as bloggers and commentators (using FB Pages and social reputations), are now expanding their horizons beyond Facebook, and simultaneously also publishing in more indexable platforms, like Substack or Medium. They're also setting up YouTube Channels. I'm not taking a position in this thread regarding which platforms might be best or why... and it's probably a longer discussion than I anticipate... except to say, apropos of the current topic, that these writers are ranking way better on Google via these platforms than they are via their Facebook Pages... and that those pages are much easier to read and to paginate for individual articles.

Much also, btw, has been written by people like Danny Sullivan (prior to his current position at Google), that it makes complete sense for Google to publicize its own news section, in the same way that you'd expect the NYT to publicize, say, its own sports section over that the Chicago Tribune's. The question, I suppose, is how is a search engine supposed to treat verticals.

Additionally, YouTube is not now what it used to be. It's been playing with several page layouts, the best of which are superb, with a great deal of information packed into the descriptive text. It's been a long time since I've seen a YouTube cat video. ;)

Getting back to WSJ's observations on video rankings, IMO they don't make sense, and I'm surprised that no one has called them on it.

Isn't the point that there can be no competitor to YouTube because Google owns search, both mobile and non-mobile search and if they are going to promote their own, then no competition will ever exist. How could it? Everyone needs to create a dominant search engine so then they too can promote their video platform?

Facebook and other competitors host the same videos, but engineers have made changes that effectively preference YouTube - owned by Google - over other video sources.

Isn't that essentially the same as saying "engineers have made changes that effectively preference Amazon over other shopping sites"? If the algorithm rewards YouTube (or Amazon) for being better sites, to put it simply, would that not be justified, even if YouTube is Google-owned? Sam Schechner, Kirsten Grind and John West are going out of their way here to suggest this is somehow a manual interference with the normal workings of the algorithm, but they provide zero evidence and rely only on "people familiar with the matter"?

Curious to see if the article will come up at the congressional hearing today. Seems to be timed for it.

Isn't the point that there can be no competitor to YouTube because Google owns search...

With all due respect, while that may or may not be true, that's not what this discussion is about. We're discussing a particular article in the WSJ.

The point is that the WSJ made some claims, suggesting engineering manipulation by YouTube to keep Facebook videos out of their search results, and that is nonsense. The opposite seems to be true. Again... Facebook is making it difficult and unnattractive for search engines to crawl and index Facebook videos.

Additionally, YouTube appears to be technically better, in the sense of being more compatible with a wider selection of browsers. I've noticed that Facebook videos, and Vimeo videos, and many news sites, were having problems with a full range of browsers... and that they are all setting up YouTube channels using YouTube's flavor of (I believe) mp4, and they're doing fine. I would not have said this, say, eight months ago. YouTube is improving.

I recently recommended to a FB-based client that they set up a YouTube channel, which they've done, so we will be able to run comparisons. Facebook, IMO, offers a better discussion platform than YouTube currently does... though it appears to me that FB discussions are built more around social communities, while YouTube audiences appear to be attracted by the subject or craft of a video itself, and what I've seen so far suggests that YouTube comments seem to be relevant over a much longer time than FB video discussions are.

I also find that the YouTube video pages are more informative than other SE's video pages... and I think that YouTube is getting uncannily good in selecting sequences of related videos that almost give me a full overview of a topic I'm viewing, not something I'd have expected them to succeed in, but they've begun to do it well.

Also, I find that YouTube is digging up video sources that are new to me, which seems to me to be inconsistent with "no competition will ever exist".comment posted above.

I also feel that YouTube may be a testing ground for a new type of Google algo, one that's more personalized and where a user can browse a topic and find better related material, regardless of who one's Friends are.

It's also interesting to see how the conventional TV networks have been developing a symbiosis with YouTube, where the results are blended over time.