Can AI search read your video content?

Video has become a valuable part of professional services marketing, and for good reason. It helps show the human side of your business – ‘people buy from people’ – makes technical subjects easier to understand, and gives firms a way to explain complex work without expecting everyone to read another long service page.

But if your firm is investing in video, there’s a practical question worth asking: Can search engines and AI tools actually read what’s in it?

A recent Wistia article on optimising videos for large language models (LLMs) makes the point clearly: tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude and Perplexity still rely heavily on the text around a video. That means transcripts, titles, descriptions and metadata.

The reason is partly practical: 100 words of basic HTML might be around 0.8KB, while the same words spoken in a 45-second HD video could be around 20MB. HTML is the code that puts readable text and content onto a web page. KB and MB are file-size measurements, and a video file is much larger and therefore more energy intensive for a crawler to process than words on a page.

So, for now, if the useful content in your video isn’t available as text, it’s much harder for AI tools to find and understand.

Don’t let good video content get lost

Many firms already have useful video content, such as a short FAQ, a webinar clip, a recruitment video, a client-facing explainer or an interview with a team member.

But what happens next? The video gets uploaded, embedded on a page, shared once on LinkedIn, and then left there. It may contain a clear answer to a question clients ask all the time, but if that answer only exists inside the player, it isn’t working as hard as it should.

This matters more in professional services because buying decisions are generally not quick ones. People want reassurance before they make contact. They want to know who they’ll be dealing with, whether the firm understands their issue, and whether the advice sounds clear and credible.

Video can help with all of that – but only if the wider page provides enough context.

Make the useful words available on the page

A transcript is no longer just a nice accessibility feature; it gives your video a written footprint.

That does not mean you should simply copy and paste an automatically generated transcript onto the page. Most raw transcripts require review because names get muddled or pauses are awkwardly transcribed. You definitely don’t want the transcript to resemble a Teams call dumped into the CMS and left as is!

Someone needs to take ownership of that job. The transcript should be checked, cleaned up and placed on the page in a way that is useful for readers. It should be clear who is speaking, what their role is and what question they are answering. It should also be obvious which service, sector or audience the video relates to.

Captions matter too, as they make videos easier to watch for people who are deaf or hard of hearing, for those watching without sound, and for those who prefer to read along while they listen. For professional services firms, captions also make video content feel more polished and accessible, particularly when the subject is technical.

However, captions are not quite the same as a transcript on the web page. Captions usually appear within the video player. A transcript sits on the page, where it can be read, scanned, linked to and understood as part of the wider website content.

The safest approach is to include both: captions for viewers and a checked transcript on the web page for readers, search engines and AI tools.

A video embed is not enough

The Wistia article notes that useful metadata can be hidden when videos are delivered via JavaScript or iframes.

That sounds technical, but the principle is straightforward. JavaScript is code that makes web pages more interactive, while an iframe lets you embed content from another website on your page, such as a YouTube video player.

Both are common and useful; however, some AI crawlers may not interpret the content within them correctly. Wistia notes that more than 95% of videos on the open web rely on these technologies, so this is not a rare issue.

For firms using YouTube, there is another point to watch. YouTube can still be valuable, but having a video on YouTube is not enough on its own. If your YouTube embeds use iframes and you want AI tools to understand the video's content, the important information should also be available as text on the page.

That is the part many firms miss. You can still use YouTube and embed video, but the words that explain the video need to sit on your website too.

It is still SEO, just with a wider audience

AI search can make everything sound new, but in practice, much of this comes back to sensible SEO.

Google’s guidance on AI features still emphasises the basics: ensure content can be crawled, use internal links so it can be found, make important content available in text form, and ensure structured data matches what is visible on the page.

For video, Google’s VideoObject guidance can also help search engines understand details such as the title, description, thumbnail, upload date and duration.

The point is not that every firm needs to become technical overnight. Video should be planned as part of the wider website and content strategy, rather than treated as something separate.

Before a video goes live, it is worth asking:

• What page should this sit on?
• What question is it answering?
• Who is speaking, and why are they credible?
• Is there a checked transcript on the page?
• Are captions included and checked?
• Does the copy link to the right service, sector, blog or team profile?
• Does the technical setup help search engines understand the video?

That quick check can have a big impact.

What this means for professional services firms

For law firms, accountants, financial planners, property professionals and expert witnesses, video is an effective way to build confidence. It enables you to explain complex services and shows the firm’s human side.

But the video itself is only part of the asset: the surrounding page matters too. The transcript, captions, heading, description, internal links and structured data all help explain what the video is about and where it fits.

At Cal Partners, this is how we think about AI search more broadly. It is not about chasing every new tool or rebuilding your marketing from scratch. It is about making your expertise easier to find, understand, trust, and, in turn, be chosen.

If your firm has video content on your website, YouTube channel, or webinar library, Cal Partners can help you turn it into content that is easier to find, read and understand. Contact us.