Run an SEO Audit Focused on AI Answer Panels and Video Carousels

Hook: Losing traffic to AI-generated answer panels or video carousels? Fix it fast

If your site has suddenly lost organic clicks to AI-generated answer panels or started losing impressions in video carousels, you need a focused, technical audit that surfaces the exact causes — and fixes them. In 2026, AI answers and video-rich SERP features are top traffic drivers and black boxes at once. This checklist walks you through the precise technical and content signals that determine whether a page gets credited inside an AI answer or displayed inside a video carousel.

The bottom line — what this audit will give you

Objective: Diagnose whether structural, markup, performance, or entity signals are causing gains or losses to AI answer panels and video carousels, then prioritize fixes with measurable KPIs.

• Pinpoint why AI answers attribute (or don’t attribute) your page
• Surface missing or malformed video schema, transcript issues, and media delivery problems
• Identify entity and authority gaps that reduce trust signals for generative answer pipelines
• Deliver a prioritised remediation plan tied to conversions and watch-time

Context: Why this matters in 2026

By late 2025 and into 2026, search engines shifted to hybrid SERPs that blend ranked links, generative AI answers, and richer video carousels. AI answer systems increasingly show concise summaries but rely on provenance signals to attribute sources and to decide whether to use and credit a result.

Simultaneously, video carousels surface both short-form and long-form media. Search systems now prefer videos with robust metadata, accurate transcripts, and clear publisher authority. That means the usual SEO checklist is incomplete — you need a targeted, technical audit for AI and video features.

How to use this guide (inverted pyramid)

Start with the quick wins and diagnostics that take 5–30 minutes. Move to deeper technical fixes and content/authority work. Finally, implement monitoring and measurement so you can prove ROI.

Quick triage (first 30 minutes)

1. Check Google Search Console for sudden drops or spikes. Filter by “AI Answer” or “Video Carousel” if available (Search Console filters for AI and video features rolled out in late 2025).
2. Identify representative pages: pick 3 pages that lost clicks to AI answers, and 3 pages that gained from video features.
3. Run the URL through the Rich Results Test and the Schema Markup Validator to surface immediate structured data errors.
4. Fetch the raw HTML as Googlebot (URL Inspection > View Crawled Page) to confirm that server-side rendering, JSON-LD injection, or token gating hasn’t hidden markup.
5. Confirm mobile and desktop versions return identical canonical signals and schema (differences often break attribution).

Technical checklist — server, crawl & index

• Crawlability: Verify robots.txt and X-Robots-Tag headers allow indexing of pages and assets (transcripts, VTT files, video files). Use a crawler (Screaming Frog/Sitebulb) to check for blocked resources.
• Canonical & pagination: Ensure canonical tags point to the preferred URL and that parameters (for tracking) aren’t creating duplicate content that confuses attribution. See edge publishing practices in rapid edge publishing.
• Renderability: Confirm that client-side injected JSON-LD is rendered for Googlebot. Prefer server-side or pre-rendered JSON-LD for consistent AI attribution — read about server-render best-practices in the edge observability playbook.
• HTTP headers for media: Validate byte-range requests, Content-Type, and CORS for video hosting. Video carousels prefer streamable content delivered via CDN with correct Range headers — technical notes on streaming and device support are covered in embedded streaming guides.
• Structured video sitemaps: Include video entries with correct durations, thumbnails, and content URLs. Video sitemaps still help discovery for large media catalogs.

Structured data checklist (must-have fields and diagnostics)

Structured data is the single most actionable area for video carousel visibility and AI answer provenance. Treat it as code — test and lint every change.

Core video schema fields to validate (VideoObject)

• name — exact title of the video or page
• description — full description, 120+ words where applicable
• thumbnailUrl — absolute URL, 16:9 preferred
• uploadDate & datePublished — ISO 8601
• duration — ISO 8601 duration (PT1M30S)
• contentUrl and/or embedUrl — direct playable URL
• interactionCount — viewCount or engagement metric
• publisher — Organization object with logo and sameAs
• transcript — either inline or a URL to a VTT/HTML transcript (see transcript section below)

Sample JSON-LD (validate with Rich Results Test)

{
  "@context": "https://schema.org",
  "@type": "VideoObject",
  "name": "How to Run an SEO Audit for AI Answers",
  "description": "A technical checklist to optimize pages and videos for AI answer panels and video carousels.",
  "thumbnailUrl": "https://example.com/thumb.jpg",
  "uploadDate": "2026-01-10",
  "duration": "PT8M32S",
  "contentUrl": "https://cdn.example.com/videos/audit.mp4",
  "embedUrl": "https://example.com/embed/audit",
  "interactionCount": 45230,
  "publisher": {
    "@type": "Organization",
    "name": "Example SEO",
    "logo": { "@type": "ImageObject", "url": "https://example.com/logo.png" }
  },
  "transcript": "https://example.com/transcripts/audit.vtt"
}

Tip: Keep JSON-LD compact and server-rendered. Avoid duplicating inconsistent values between meta tags and schema.

Transcript & caption best practices (critical for both AI and video carousels)

Transcripts are required for deep understanding. AI answer systems and indexing pipelines use transcripts to extract quotes, timestamps, and entities.

• Provide a machine-readable transcript: Use WebVTT (.vtt) or SubRip (.srt) accessible by URL and referenced by the video player. Field streaming and mobile capture workflows are discussed in the PocketCam Pro field review.
• Map timestamps to schema: Either include a transcript URL in VideoObject or include a structured, timestamped transcript on the page (HTML with timestamps and an ID for each segment).
• Sync transcript content and JSON-LD: The body transcript must match the VideoObject description and transcript URL to avoid conflicting signals.
• Quality-first transcripts: Use human-reviewed transcripts for accuracy (automated speech-to-text is a good start, but errors can misattribute quotes inside AI answers).
• Include chapter markers: Use schema: Clip or create HTML chapters with data-timestamp attributes to help SERPs surface specific segments; this is increasingly useful as micro-doc formats get surfaced for snippets.

Entity & authority signals (how AI chooses sources)

Generative AI answers use entity graphs, provenance, and authority signals to decide which sources to credit. Strengthen these signals.

• Explicit entity markup: Use schema for Organization, Person, and Product. Link to canonical entity pages (About, Team bios with structured data, press mentions).
• SameAs & knowledge panel links: Add sameAs to JSON-LD linking to authoritative profiles (Wikipedia/Wikidata, official social handles).
• Strong internal linking: Ensure topic hubs signal your site’s topical authority with clear pillar pages and contextual internal links.
• External provenance: Digital PR and backlinks from recognized industry sites feed entity confidence. Late-2025 algorithms increased weight for cross-platform mentions (social + mainstream media).

Video-specific UX & performance checks

• Thumbnail quality & aspect: 16:9 thumbnails with clear branding increase CTR. Test both round and rectangular crop because carousels show different crops depending on device.
• Playback metrics: Track play rate, average view duration, and completion rate. These are now critical ranking signals for carousels — see best practices for stream monetization in monetize Twitch streams.
• Player accessibility: HTML5 video with and proper controls ensures indexing of captions and transcripts.
• Load performance: Lazy-load video files but ensure preview thumbnails and structured data are available on initial load. Optimize formats (AV1/VP9/HEVC fallback) where supported.
• Adaptive streaming: Provide HLS/DASH with correct manifest files; slow or blocked streaming will exclude videos from carousels. Technical streaming notes are covered in embedded streaming guides.

Content & query intent — what to optimize for AI answers

AI answers favor concise, well-structured content with clear claims, citations, and disambiguation. Follow these rules:

• Answer intent early: Put the concise answer or summary at the top, then expand. AI systems commonly extract opening summaries for answers.
• Support every claim: Link to primary sources, include timestamps or quotes for video evidence, and use inline citations where appropriate.
• Structured Q&A blocks: Use FAQPage schema for common questions; use properly formatted heading hierarchies and short answer paragraphs for extraction.
• Disambiguate entities: When a term has multiple entities, create disambiguation or definition blocks to reduce hallucination risk in AI answers.

Diagnostics: What to measure and how

Baseline measurement is essential. Create snapshots before fixes so you can quantify impact.

• Search Console: Track impressions, clicks, CTR for pages under filters for AI Answers and Video Carousels. Export daily data for time-series analysis.
• GA4 / Measurement: Create segments for users who visited from AI answer attributions (using landing page + query parameter heuristics) and for video plays. Track conversions and watch-time as events.
• Engagement metrics: Average session duration, pages per session, and video-specific metrics (start, pause, percent watched).
• Rank & feature tracking: Use a tool that flags SERP features (Ahrefs, Semrush, RankRanger). Monitor feature ownership changes for target keywords.

Common problems & targeted fixes

Problem: JSON-LD invisible to bots

Fix: Server-render JSON-LD or include it in an inline