Chapters and captions

Chapters are titled timestamps you add per video; they appear in the player, on the public page as a clickable list, and in the page’s structured data as Clip key moments. Captions are a WebVTT track you upload or paste, toggled from the control bar, and they make the video usable in a sound-off feed.

Updated 2026-08-18 · Markdown version

Adding chapters

In a video's Chapters tab, add a start time and a title per chapter. Rules that make them useful:

• The first chapter starts at 0:00.
• Titles describe what the viewer gets, not the section number — "Set up the embed" beats "Part 2".
• Three to eight chapters is the range where a viewer actually uses them; twenty is a table of contents nobody reads.

Chapters appear as markers in the progress bar, as a menu in the player, and as a clickable list under the video on its public page.

Chapters and search

On a public video page, each chapter becomes a Clip in the page's VideoObject structured data with a start and end offset, and the page advertises a SeekToAction. That is the mechanism Google uses to show key moments beside a video result. Nothing guarantees they appear, but a video without chapter data cannot be eligible at all.

Captions

Upload or paste a WebVTT (.vtt) track. Once a track exists, the player shows a CC button and remembers the viewer's choice.

Captions are worth the effort for three separate reasons: most social-referred viewers watch with sound off, captions are an accessibility requirement in many contexts, and caption text is real text on the page for search and assistants to read.

A practical workflow: transcribe with whatever tool you already use, fix the product names by hand, then paste the VTT. Keep cue lines short — two lines of about forty characters each — so a wrapped caption never covers half the frame.

Transcripts

A video can also carry a full transcript, shown under the player with in-page search and included in the page's structured data and its .md twin. See video SEO for why that matters more than any tag.