Yahoo! has introduced a new Search Monkey feature that allows web masters to embed videos, games and documents directly into their Yahoo! search results. You don’t have to build a special application to access this feature, just include a few lines of semantic markup information and the Yahoo! crawler will do the rest.

Once you have included the markup information, your video, game or document (such as a presentation) will appear as an enhanced result in the SERPs. Is this a bonus for web masters?

There are two ways to look at this new feature. The downside is that as an enhanced result, a click on the video image for example, am expanded video screen will drop down enabling the user to view the video from within the search results. Why a downside? The user is not actually visiting your web pages.

The upside? If your video is a promotional type video – such as a video advertisement, the user can view the ad without going to your site. If they video contents send the right message and click to visit your site, you will have a highly targeted visitor. Conversions from this group should be fairly high.

This is not for everyone at this stage. As I mentioned, it will not lead to more traffic, possibly less. That traffic may be better targeted only time will tell. If you create promotional type videos then by all means use the feature.

I wonder though whether or not users will actually click on these videos if they are all going to be promotional in nature. How many users click to see video ads – apart from those that become famous (or infamous). I cannot see web masters putting ‘how to’ type videos into their search results – unless they can get clever and put video snippets in with an invitation to visit the web site for the full version – but then that is still a promo video isn’t it.

Used cleverly this may be a plus for many business owners. It means more work added to the regular SEO routine. It is a step in the right direction by Yahoo! but I doubt it will do much to increase their presence as a search engine.