Google Adds creator and Updated interactionStatistic Docs to Video Structured Data

Google updated its VideoObject structured data documentation on September 24, 2026. The changes add the creator property to the recommended list, note that author is supported as an alternative, and update interactionStatistic to document which interaction types Google supports.

The entry appears on Google's Search documentation updates page and is worth reading precisely, because the wording describes a documentation change. It doesn't announce a new rich result, a new ranking factor or a new requirement.

What the changelog says

Google's entry, dated September 24, reads:

• Title: "Added creator property and updated interactionStatistic in VideoObject structured data"
• What: Added the creator property, "noting support for author", and updated interactionStatistic "to document supported interaction types".
• Why: "To document support for the creator and author properties, and clarify supported interaction types for interactionStatistic".

The verb throughout is "document". Google says the purpose is to record support and clarify behaviour, and it does not say that either property is new to Search, that behaviour has changed, or that markup without them will lose anything. Anyone treating this as a new requirement is reading more into it than Google wrote.

The creator property

On the video structured data page, creator sits in the recommended properties, not the required ones. The required properties for VideoObject are name, thumbnailUrl and uploadDate.

The documentation describes it this way:

• creator (or author) — a Person or Organization: "The person or organization that created or published the video."
• creator.name (or author.name) — text. "If a person or organization is specified, you must provide either name or alternateName."
• creator.url (or author.url) — a URL: "A link to a web page that uniquely identifies the creator or organization (such as a profile page or homepage)."

Google's example for a person looks like this:

"creator": {
  "@type": "Person",
  "name": "Jane Doe",
  "url": "https://www.example.com/users/janedoe"
}

The page's full VideoObject examples include a creator block too, using an Organization in the JSON-LD example and a matching itemprop="creator" span in the Microdata version.

Two details matter in practice. First, the "(or author)" wording means a site that already marks up author on videos doesn't have to rename it. Second, the requirement that a specified creator must have a name or alternateName is the part most likely to trip up existing markup: a creator object with only a url is incomplete by Google's own definition.

The interactionStatistic update

interactionStatistic is not new. It is the InteractionCounter property Google has recommended since October 2019, when, per the documentation, "we changed our documentation to recommend interactionStatistic instead of interactionCount". Google says it continues to support interactionCount, but recommends interactionStatistic "moving forward".

What the September 24 update adds is the list of interaction types. The documentation now says Google supports the following interactionType values:

interactionType	What it counts, per Google
WatchAction	The number of times the video has been watched
LikeAction	The number of likes or upvotes
CommentAction	The number of comments
ShareAction	The number of reshares

The userInteractionCount is an integer, "the number of times this interaction was performed". The documented structure is:

"interactionStatistic": {
  "@type": "InteractionCounter",
  "interactionType": { "@type": "WatchAction" },
  "userInteractionCount": 12345
}

Note what the page says about the property as a whole: it describes interactionStatistic as "User statistics applied to the video, if applicable". The documentation doesn't say these counts affect rankings, rich result eligibility or display, and this post makes no claim that they do.

What this means for your markup

For most sites nothing breaks and nothing is required. But this is a reasonable prompt for a short audit if you publish video:

1. Check what you currently emit. Look at a live watch page's JSON-LD or Microdata. Do you have creator or author? Does it include name?
2. Check the type you use for interactions. If you output counts using a type not in the list above, the documentation now says which four Google supports. Anything else isn't covered by the documentation.
3. Check for the old property. If any templates still use interactionCount, Google says it remains supported, but recommends interactionStatistic. A template change is optional, not urgent.
4. Only mark up what's true and visible. Counts should reflect the real number of watches, likes, comments or shares. Google's general structured data guidelines, which the video page links to, apply as they always did.
5. Test after any change. Google's documentation describes the same build, test and release process for all structured data types. Validate the page before and after, and check Search Console afterwards for any new structured data warnings.

Read the changelog, not a summary of it

Documentation changes like this one are easy to skip, but they are the most reliable record of what Google says it supports. This entry states its purpose plainly: to document support for creator and author, and to clarify the supported interaction types. That is a reason to check your markup against the page, and not a reason to rebuild it. Anything beyond that is interpretation.

Sources

• Google Search Central: Documentation updates (September 24, 2026 entry)
• Google Search Central: Video (VideoObject, Clip, BroadcastEvent) structured data