Monday, April 19, 2010 at 5:12 PM
Webmaster Level: AllThe single best way to make Google aware of all your videos on your website is to create and maintain a Video Sitemap. Video Sitemaps provide Google with essential information about your videos, including the URLs for the pages where the videos can be found, the titles of the videos, keywords, thumbnail images, durations, and other information. The Sitemap also allows you to define the period of time for which each video will be available. This is particularly useful for content that has explicit viewing windows, so that we can remove the content from our index when it expires.
Once your Sitemap is created, you can can submit the URL of the Sitemap file in Google Webmaster Tools or through your robots.txt file.
Once we have indexed a video, it may appear in our web search results in what we call a Video Onebox (a cluster of videos related to the queried topic) and in our video search property, Google Videos. A video result is immediately recognizable by its thumbnail, duration, and a description.
As an example, this is what a video result from CNN.com looks like on Google:
We encourage those of you with videos to submit Video Sitemaps and to keep them updated with your new content. Please also visit our recently updated Video Sitemap Help Center, and utilize our Sitemap Help Forum. If you've submitted a Video Sitemap file via Webmaster Tools and want to share your experiences or problems, you can do so here.
32 comments:
Thanks for the advice. Maybe this is a stupid question, but if we host our videos on YouTube and embed them on our site, is it then any point to make a videsitemap?
Thanks for your help, and great blogposts.
Hi Magnus,
The answer to your question is yes, there is a point. The video sitemap will point to the url where the video is located on your site. So, if you posted a video on www.mysite.com/embedded-video.html the sitemap would point to that page on your site.
Hello Ian,
Thank you for your quick reply. Then I guess this is something that should be done if we want to increase the ranking of the blogposts with videos.
Thanks.
Hi,
Does output from webinars count as videos? They're stored and posted on our web site.
Thanks!
hai magnus,
i have created the video sitemap for embedded youtube videos on my blog. google successfully crawled it.. now my embed videos shown in google search results. check out this url.
http://fourblogger.com/create-video-sitemap-embedded-youtube-videos-and-drive-traffic-part-2/
Suresh K, thanks, I get the idea! Then I will get some more technically skilled people to make this video sitemap for me!
Magnus
Creating a site map is a lot of work.
It'd be even better if I could add meta tags to the pages on the fly (CMS) with the video titles, description, etc that are already on the page anyway.
I too put videos on youtube for my blog. Thanks Ian
Video sitemap. You know, sometimes the answer is so simple and right in front of us. Thanks for the heads up!
@magnus.sordal, @Ian Worrall: Great to read your discussion. Yes, as Ian stated, creating a Video Sitemap in magnus.sordal's case is helpful. The Video Sitemap can inform us of the playpage URL, especially when it's different from the URL of your uploaded YouTube video.
I would recommend to use Media RSS instead of Video Sitemaps - Google supports both, but you can also submit your Media RSS feed to other video search engines / services too.
@nelson, thanks, I understand that you work in Google. What´s your opinion on the Media RSS solution?
@Ian, thanks, I agree, if Google picks up the videos as good with the Media RSS feed it would be good if this is better for the other search engines.
Personally I do not have much knowledge about this, I don´t even know how to make an Meda RSS or a Video Sitemap. I have talked to a tech-guy who indicated that there was some thumbnail-issues, but that he would be able to solve them. I don´t know what it really meant.
Hello,
What would I put for the and if I host my videos on YouTube, but have them embedded in a single player on the site.
I looked at the directions on creating the video google sitemaps, but unfortunately, still could not figure it out. (http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?answer=80472)
I would really appreciate any help with that.
Thanks,
Thanks for the advice. I never thought of adding detailed information about the video in the sitemap.
Hello,
@vasya
For creating video sitemap which hosted in youtube. This http://ow.ly/1CQfS might helpful.
@magnus.sordal, Google treats both mRSS and Video Sitemaps the same, so the decision is really up to you.
@nelson: thanks for your advice.
Anyone know how you load your video sitemap to blogger? I can't find any documentaion. Thanks
Nice informations, i'm very interesting, i like it.
Nelson,
Great posting. I'll be sure to include this tip in my next social media marketing presentation. Lots of clients are incorporating video into their websites. It's good to know that even if videos are hosted on YouTube or elsewhere that a video sitemap will help to increase search engine visibility. Thanks!
Hello all!
I've tested the video sitemaps and it doesn't work for me =(
I've submitted to different xml video sitemaps to google webmaster center and a sitemap index file.
The first type is with <video:player_loc with src-path to a video hosted on vimeo (...swf?clip_id=...)
and the other is
<video:content_loc with path to a flv-file hosted on blip.tv
All XML sitemaps are status OK and for video sitemaps it shows
URLs 1
indexed URLs 1
So it seems OK.
But when I search in google (or even google video) for specific word combination, tags, and and and... (I'Ve tryed lot combinations) my video doesn't appear in search results.
Only the hosted videos on vimeo.com or youtube and they are ofcource not lining to my blog =(
I've submitted them yesterday.
Can You guys give me some tipps?
There are the links to the videositemap-XMLs:
http://screencastblog.net/videositemap.xml
http://screencastblog.net/videositemap2.xml
if You like, we can discuss in this google help forum:
http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/Webmasters/thread?fid=722f17ff9b983df7000485bf5f4af496&hl=en
Thank you very much!
What seems to be the consensus? A video sitemap or media RSS feed? Which one is easier to implement?
Is there an issue with Google when you submit the video sitemap with YouTube videos?
It seems not to index any of the youtube, vimeo and so on videos for your site.
If you submit content or players of less known video services it seems to work quite well indexing them.
I use a video sitemap, and have had videos indexed from my site. Recently, they all fell out of Google Video index except for one. Right after the may google updates. My Video sitemap did not change. Just wondering what would cause them to fall out of video search, when they have been in there for a year or so.
Interesting!
Two questions please is urgent!
How about Youtube videos embedded in my site?
If Searchmonkey dissapears: Is there any differeance with the markup of SM Media vocabulary?
Hi, can i use this in blogger.com? if yes, can you post a link of how to? because i will like to do it but I have no idea
I think, you can see the sourcecode of blogger-posts. Then you should see the embed/object-code for your video. So you can get the direct link, site etc. and use it in your video sitemap.
I don't think this works for Vimeo embeds. my video sitemap is here http://expo77.com/sitemap_video.xml, been up for over a week and nothing is showing up in search.
Thanks !! Now i can index my videos on google.
Hi,
I have submitted video sitemap however, they are not getting indexed. They were ranking on serp initially then I hosted them on youtube. I lost all ranks so I brought them back on website since then I have failed to get videositemap indexed.
Any suggestion for this ???
is there any way to create sitemap video for blogspot?
Hi everyone,
Since over a year has passed since we published this post, we're closing the comments to help us focus on the work ahead. If you still have a question or comment you'd like to discuss, free to visit and/or post your topic in our Webmaster Central Help Forum.
Thanks and take care,
The Webmaster Central Team
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