Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research
      Moz Pro

      Track AI Overviews in Keyword Research

      Try it free!
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints
      Moz API

      Unlock flexible pricing & new endpoints

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. How can I make sure Google is crawling a link from an iframe (video)?

    Moz Q&A is closed.

    After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.

    How can I make sure Google is crawling a link from an iframe (video)?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    3
    12
    3019
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • zpm2014
      zpm2014 Subscriber last edited by

      Do they crawl backlinks from an iframe example from a Youtube video embedded in a blog post? TIA!

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • PhilNottingham
        PhilNottingham @zpm2014 last edited by

        That test in no-way proves that the link passed PageRank.

        I'm not sure about an href within an iframe, but equally I don't see any reason why you would do that?

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • zpm2014
          zpm2014 Subscriber @PhilNottingham last edited by

          So this test is not true:

          https://www.seroundtable.com/google-iframe-link-14558.html

          What if there's an a href tag (can be seen through "inspect element") within the iframe embedded in a webpage?

          PhilNottingham 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • PhilNottingham
            PhilNottingham @zpm2014 last edited by

            Nope, they can't. Those links are within the iframe.

            If you're trying to get link equity from embedded video, it'll need to be with crediting text links or images outside of the actual player, as overlays are done with JavaScript, which doesn't pass PageRank by all accounts.

            zpm2014 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • zpm2014
              zpm2014 Subscriber @PhilNottingham last edited by

              We created videos that will be embedded to other sites and we have to take advantage of the backlinks.

              Regarding Youtube videos, it was just another question if Google can crawl backlinks (the hyperlinked Youtube logo within a video embedded to an external site or webpage) of a Youtube page.

              PhilNottingham 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • PhilNottingham
                PhilNottingham @zpm2014 last edited by

                Not quite sure I understand... Are you trying to build links to the YouTube video on youtube.com? if so, an embed through an iframe does sort of count as a "link" to the video (i.e. it provides ranking equity), but only in the unique case of YouTube videos.

                Or are you wondering if links in the descriptions/overlays will pass PageRank?

                zpm2014 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • zpm2014
                  zpm2014 Subscriber @RyanPurkey last edited by

                  This is for link building, Ryan. Do you think Google will still follow the links from an iframe?

                  PhilNottingham 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • RyanPurkey
                    RyanPurkey @PhilNottingham last edited by

                    Ah, ya, since OP is asking about these videos after they're embedded in other sites maybe he means will this be like link building?  Or maybe he's asking about view lift and popularity of the original video?  OP, I think you'll need to clarify some to get a more precise answer.

                    zpm2014 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • PhilNottingham
                      PhilNottingham @RyanPurkey last edited by

                      I wrote that post, and it's now nearly three years out of date.

                      They have got better at crawling iframes since then, and now you can get a video indexed if it's embedded in an iframe.

                      However, I don't think this relates to the question specifically?

                      RyanPurkey 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • PhilNottingham
                        PhilNottingham last edited by

                        Google see iframes as basically "a window into other sites". As such, no, they don't crawl links in this way - however, they will likely then crawl the page which the iframe references, and thereby pick up any backlinks there.

                        I'm not quite sure how this might related to an embedded YouTube video, but YouTube videos are indexed instantly anyway once they're published because Google don't need to crawl YouTube (they have access to the database)

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                        • zpm2014
                          zpm2014 Subscriber @RyanPurkey last edited by

                          Thanks Ryan! These videos will be embedded in other websites.

                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • RyanPurkey
                            RyanPurkey last edited by

                            This post is fairly extensive in regards to your question and should give you ideas even beyond what you're asking here,  http://moz.com/blog/hosting-and-embedding-for-video-seo but if you're looking for the highlight, this is still pretty applicable advice today:

                            Embed the content with HTML5 and JavaScript or Flash, but not an iframe

                            Unfortunately, Google are not very good at crawling iframes at the moment; so if you want videos to be indexed, you need to make sure you’re embedding content in an HTML5 player with Flash fallback, or a pure Flash player.

                            If the video is being embedded on your own site you can also create a transcription for it on the same page and then place the links in according spots.  Cheers!

                            zpm2014 PhilNottingham 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 1
                            • 1 / 1
                            • First post
                              Last post

                            Got a burning SEO question?

                            Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                            Start my free trial


                            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.

                            • See all categories

                            Related Questions

                            • SEOhmygod

                              Does content revealed by a 'show more' button get crawled by Google?

                              I have a div on my website with around 500 words of unique content in, automatically when the page is first visited the div has a fixed height of 100px, showing a couple of hundred words and fading out to white, with a show more button, which when clicked, increases the height to show the full content. My question is, does Google crawl the content in that div when it renders the page? Or disregard it? Its all in the source code. Or worse, do they consider this cloaking or hidden content? It is only there to make the site more useable for customers, so i don't want to get penalised for it. Cheers

                              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOhmygod
                              0
                            • placementLabs

                              How can I stop spam Google Organic traffic?

                              Hey Moz, I'm a rather experienced SEO who just encountered a problem I have never faced. I am hoping to get some advice or be pointed in the right direction. I just started work for a new client. Really great client and website. Nicer than most design/content. They will need some rel canonical work but that is not the issue here. The traffic looked great at first glance 131k visits in April. Google Analytics Acquisition Overview showed 94% of the traffic as organic. When I dug deeper and looked at the organic source I saw that Google was 99.9% of it. Normal enough. Then I looked at the time on site and my jaw dropped. 118,454 Organic New Users for Google only stayed on the site for 3 seconds. There is no way that the traffic is real. It does not match what Google Webmaster tools, Moz, and Ahrefs are telling me. How do I stop a service that is sending fake organic Google traffic?

                              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | placementLabs
                              0
                            • RosemaryB

                              My client wants to apply schematic markup to their iframe youtube video. Is this possible?

                              I have a client that wants to apply video object schema to their iframe youtube video. Here is the source code: <iframe src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/clientvideo" width="272" height="202" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen=""></iframe> Is it possible to apply schema markup to this kind of iframe source code?   Our development team was having a hard time with it. Thanks!

                              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | RosemaryB
                              0
                            • ScottOlson

                              Can Google Crawl AJAX filters?

                              Can Google crawl and render pages within Ajax Filters?

                              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | ScottOlson
                              0
                            • MiguelSalcido

                              Does Disavowing Links Negate Anchor Text, or Just Negates Link Juice

                              I'm not so sure that disavowing links also discounts the anchor texts from those links. Because nofollow links absolutely still pass anchor text values. And disavowing links is supposed to be akin to nofollowing the links. I wonder because there's a potential client I'm working on an RFP for and they have tons of spammy directory links all using keyword rich anchor texts and they lost 98% of their traffic in Pengiun 1.0 and haven't recovered. I want to know what I'm getting into. And if I just disavow those links, I'm thinking that it won't help the anchor text ratio issues. Can anyone confirm?

                              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | MiguelSalcido
                              0
                            • khi5

                              Will Google View Using Google Translate As Duplicate?

                              If I have a page in English, which exist on 100 other websites, we have a case where my website has duplicate content. What if I use Google Translate to translate the page from English to Japanese, as the only website doing this translation will my page get credit for producing original content? Or, will Google view my page as duplicate content, because Google can tell it is translated from an original English page, which runs on 100+ different websites, since Google Translate is Google's own software?

                              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | khi5
                              0
                            • M_D_Golden_Peak

                              Do 404 Pages from Broken Links Still Pass Link Equity?

                              Hi everyone, I've searched the Q&A section, and also Google, for about the past hour and couldn't find a clear answer on this. When inbound links point to a page that no longer exists, thus producing a 404 Error Page, is link equity/domain authority lost? We are migrating a large eCommerce website and have hundreds of pages with little to no traffic that have legacy 301 redirects pointing to their URLs. I'm trying to decide how necessary it is to keep these redirects. I'm not concerned about the page authority of the pages with little traffic...I'm concerned about overall domain authority of the site since that certainly plays a role in how the site ranks overall in Google (especially pages with no links pointing to them...perfect example is Amazon...thousands of pages with no external links that rank #1 in Google for their product name). Anyone have a clear answer? Thanks!

                              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | M_D_Golden_Peak
                              0
                            • qdigi

                              Can Google read my backlink in Javascript??

                              Hi SeoMoz community! I have a software product, which our clients implement onto their websites. It is like a pop up box. I know that backlinks are very important for SEO ranking, and I really want to give our clients 2 options of product: 1. you can get the free/cheaper option if you use the code which has a keyworded backlink to our site on it 2. you can pay small fee if you don't want to use the version with a link to our site on it Now, the problem is that the product is written entirely in Javascript, and I don't think that Google crawls this, do they? Is there a way around this? Thanks for your help!

                              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | qdigi
                              0

                            Get started with Moz Pro!

                            Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                            Start my free trial
                            Products
                            • Moz Pro
                            • Moz Local
                            • Moz API
                            • Moz Data
                            • STAT
                            • Product Updates
                            Moz Solutions
                            • SMB Solutions
                            • Agency Solutions
                            • Enterprise Solutions
                            • Digital Marketers
                            Free SEO Tools
                            • Domain Authority Checker
                            • Link Explorer
                            • Keyword Explorer
                            • Competitive Research
                            • Brand Authority Checker
                            • Local Citation Checker
                            • MozBar Extension
                            • MozCast
                            Resources
                            • Blog
                            • SEO Learning Center
                            • Help Hub
                            • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                            • How-to Guides
                            • Moz Academy
                            • API Docs
                            About Moz
                            • About
                            • Team
                            • Careers
                            • Contact
                            Why Moz
                            • Case Studies
                            • Testimonials
                            Get Involved
                            • Become an Affiliate
                            • MozCon
                            • Webinars
                            • Practical Marketer Series
                            • MozPod
                            Connect with us

                            Contact the Help team

                            Join our newsletter
                            Moz logo
                            © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                            • Accessibility
                            • Terms of Use
                            • Privacy

                            Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.