Google's Key Moments feature shows chapter thumbnails inline on the SERP for a video result. Two ways to be eligible: YouTube description chapters following strict formatting, or explicit Clip / SeekToAction structured data on the landing page.
Most videos fail on the first approach because the formatting rules are strict and unwritten in obvious places. Video Key Moments Eligibility Checker parses a pasted description or VTT and checks all of them.
Chapter formatting rules Google enforces
- First timestamp must be 0:00. If your first chapter starts at 0:05, no Key Moments.
- Minimum 3 chapters. 2 chapters doesn't qualify.
- Each chapter ≥ 10 seconds. A 5-second intro disqualifies the whole video.
- Ascending order. Out-of-order timestamps (because you edited badly) kill eligibility.
- Chapter titles 3-70 characters. Single-word titles sometimes work; emoji-only titles don't; over 70 chars truncate.
The tool parses m:ss and h:mm:ss formats, extracts the title part, and runs every check against your actual chapters.
The Clip / SeekToAction path
If YouTube description chapters are impractical (pre-existing videos you can't re-edit), you can ship Clip JSON-LD on the page that embeds the video. Each Clip has name, startOffset, endOffset, and url (with #t=... seek anchor).
The tool emits a scaffold VideoObject + hasPart: [Clip] JSON-LD block you can drop onto your video's landing page. Fill in the three bracketed placeholders (video URL, description, thumbnail) and ship.
LearningResource / QAPage overlay
For educational videos specifically, Google's LearningResource schema stacks on top of VideoObject and can qualify you for the learning-video SERP feature. Not audited by this tool (separate schema scope), but worth knowing about.
Related reading
- YouTube Channel Audit — channel-home level signals
- Schema Fix Bundle — Clip + VideoObject emitter
- Speakable Generator — for voice-search on video landing pages
Fact-check notes and sources
- Google video structured data: developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/video
- YouTube chapter format rules: support.google.com/youtube/answer/9884579
- Schema.org Clip: schema.org/Clip
The $100 Network covers ranking video in both YouTube Search and Google Video carousels. The tool is the pre-publish check.
