Why no video thumbnail?
-
We started using Wistia for our video hosting, and our SERP results for the video pages were showing thumbnails in the results, but somewhere along the line we just stopped getting the thumbnails to show, and I'm not sure why.
Anyone have any ideas?
Search: Edward Asner Interview by Malcolm Hillgartner
We are both Blackstoneaudio.com and Downpour.com, and yes, I know there are issues with posting the content on both sites, more concerned with why the thumbnails disappeared from both sites.
-
Thanks Phil,
That was my guess, I just wanted confirmation, and between you and the folks at Wistia sounds like that's the most plausible explanation.
Thanks everyone for taking the time to help out with this!
-
I'm 90% positive it's because you've hidden the video code itself behind a JavaScript trigger, so Googlebot struggles to see it.
While you used to be able to get videos indexed just with a video sitemap, Google have got slightly better at working out whether that sitemap actually corresponds to content in the HTML, but if you've used JS to execute the embedded video, you're likely to find that it won't get indexed.
So, I'd recommend looking at fixing that implementation and potentially see if you can do it just with CSS, or shift the page around so the embed loads up when the page does, not after a secondary trigger.
-
So, I talked to Wistia and they said there may be an issue with the video not initializing on the page since it is behind a button/tab and not on the page to start with. I was kind of expecting someone to say something about that, but no one did. Is this a problem in anyone's view? The code for the video IS in the page before the button is clicked.
-
Hmm...yeah, it doesn't show up, but it does detect the thumbnail url and I can verify that it works.
-
Google selectively shows rich snippets.
Plug your URL into the Google Structured Data Testing Tool. http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets
If it works, stop worrying about your snippet and focus on other areas of your site you can improve.
-
Hmm... interesting, since early January huh? I know someone on our side came around and added the button interface that effectively "hides" the video initially and you have to click the button to actually show the video on the page, so I was wondering if that had anything to do with it (the video is in the code still). This is a possibility I hadn't considered.
I'd still like to hear if anyone has any other thoughts, but thanks for the link to the article, good information to have.
-
I am having issues trying to remove the video snippet, I think it could all be related as I just read this http://searchengineland.com/google-authorship-bug-affects-very-few-sites-actively-working-on-a-fix-167167
Also, it's not guaranteed to show anyway. But if it was showing before I'm not sure why it would just disappear.
I reckon it's something to do with Google in my opinion.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Video Sitemap Creation Question
I have created a sitemap file as per Google Web Master Tools instructions. I have it saved as a .txt file. Am I right in thinking that this needs to be uploaded as a .xml file? If so, how do I convert this to a XML? I have tried but it seems to corrupt - there must be a simple way to do this?!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DHS_SH0 -
Does having a video rich snippet keep your result from being top 5 in Google?
It makes sense to me that Google wouldn't want a rich result above the fold in a SERP that would compete with their PLA's. All my videos are on my product pages, so the queries that produce them always have PLAs in the SERPs. I've been run a few tests on this and it seems as though these snippets keep my result below the fold on the SERP (position 5-10). Thoughts on this? Experience?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RobbieWilliams0 -
CSS, infographics, video and social bookmarks been overdone?
As the title says have CSS, info graphics, video and social bookmarks been overdone to the point that they are not worth doing for links, even if they are low quality links in the sense that they only pass a small amount of juice this is fine but I want to know are these links bad (the same as 99% of directories) that can get you penalised. I am in a pretty uncompetitive niche but need to build links up fast (this will also diversify my link graph) so would these types of links be ok or what would you suggest for low value links not low quality.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | BobAnderson0 -
Video SEO
Hello All! I'm wondering about the best way to link build and carry on my video trend. I love to create video's with all of my articles as I feel it adds an extra element to just boring old text! The problem is that my current 25 links from Youtube are all NoFollow. This didn't originally bother me, but it's starting too. Is there a couple of websites that I could upload my article/ video to and gain a link from in a similar manner? Come to think of it, is this a good SEO tactic to use?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Paul_Tovey0 -
Embed hosted videos or Youtube videos on site
Youtube is our major source of traffic. We also have many of the same videos on our own site, self-hosted. They use the same video player as our paid video course, which allows the user to increase or decrease speed. We're debating whether to replace these self-hosted videos with youtube embeds. Pros: Increase Youtube viewcounts More engagement with videos (videos suggested at end of youtube videos are almost all our own) Cons Possible outbound traffic to youtube. We can't showcase our video player's speed change function I'm not sure how embed views are taken into account by Youtube, and how big a factor outbound traffic is. Would you suggest swapping out our self-hosted videos for embeds? We want to maintain our Youtube channel's edge, and convince people to sign up for our course.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lighttable0 -
Updating Youtube Videos
My company has a popular Youtube channel. Some of the videos are old, and lower quality than the new HD videos we host on our site. We'd like to get the new, better videos on Youtube, but we don't want to erase the viewcounts and comments of the old videos. We also don't want a duplicate content penalty, if that exists on Youtube. What should we do? We could: 1. Overwrite our old videos with the new ones, and lose the view counts 2. Add the new videos, and leave the old videos untouched 3. Add the new videos, and add some kind of redirect from the old videos 4. Do nothing. We want to embed the new videos on our site to increase our Youtube view counts, so options 1-3 are preferable. Has anyone faced a similar situation?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lighttable0 -
Schema markup for videos: Are video schema tags only for use on video hosted by a site or do they also apply to embedded videos hosted on YouTube?
We do not currently have a native video hosting solution for our site and instead embed videos that are hosted on YouTube. Can video schema markup be used for YouTube hosted video? Thank you.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lwalker0 -
I have evidence that product videos are hurting our rankings - How do I hide them!?
We normally rank between #1-3 for long-tail product related keywords in our industry. Then we saw our rankings drop when we added product videos to some of our product pages. My hypothesis was that for most ecommerce-related queries, Google has a certain aesthetic that they are going for in the SERP's. They like to show video listings somewhere in the middle of the first page.. not as one of the first 3 results. Product page Product page Google shopping results Product page Video Result on product page Video Result on product page Product page I did an experiment by removing the product videos from a selection of our product pages and as soon as they were reindexed w/o the video we saw an average of a 3 spot jump in rankings! Since the product videos have actually helped on-site conversion rate.. we'd like to keep them on the product pages but hide them from being indexed by Google. Is there a safe way to do this? Is it possible to use an i-frame, or will Google still see the video on the page and index it as such. Thanks for any advice!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | WebstaurantStore.com0