ComScore Video Metrix just released online video data for February. They revealed that 170 million Us internew users watched online video content in February — well over 50% of the population of the United States.
For the month of February the average person who watched online video watch 13.6 hours of video, with more than 5 billion total viewing sessions over the course of the month.
As you would predict, Google ranked top for video content, about three times as many views as any of the rivals for the #2 position (Microsoft, Yahoo, Facebook, VEVO, Viacom). With YouTube currently the second largest search engine, that certainly comes as no surprise.
But this data does reinforce the important of video for SEO. Consumption of video content is growing constantly, and the more popular and important it becomes, the more search engines like Google are going to be incorporating video into their search results. And the more videos are in your search results, the more you’re missing out on by not including video in your SEO strategy.