undefined
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
    • SEO Q&A
    • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
  • Blog
  • Why Moz
    • Agency Solutions
    • Enterprise Solutions
    • Small Business Solutions
    • Case Studies
    • 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.

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
    Moz Pro

    NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

    Learn more
  • 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
    • 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.

    • Case Studies

      Explore how Moz drives ROI with a proven track record of success.

    • 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. Technical SEO
  4. Do YouTube videos in iFrames get crawled?

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.

Do YouTube videos in iFrames get crawled?

Technical SEO
5
7
2.3k
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.
  • DigitalAnarchy
    DigitalAnarchy last edited by Dec 28, 2015, 6:14 PM

    There seems to be quite a few articles out there that say iframes cause problems with organic search and that the various bots can't/won't crawl them. Most of the articles are a few years old (including Moz's video sitemap article). I'm wondering if this is still the case with YouTube/Vimeo/etc videos, all of which only offer iFrames as an embed option.

    I have a hard time believing that a Google property (YT) would offer an embed option that it's own bot couldn't crawl. However, let me know if that is in fact the case.

    Thanks!

    Jim

    1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
    • DigitalAnarchy
      DigitalAnarchy @jtaylormoon last edited by Jan 10, 2016, 10:46 PM Jan 10, 2016, 10:46 PM

      Hi Joricia,

      What do you use for transcribing? I've tried Dragon but it's video transcription function is useless. Don't really have the money to get everything manually transcribed.

      Thanks,

      Jim

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • BlueprintMarketing
        BlueprintMarketing @DigitalAnarchy last edited by Jan 4, 2016, 7:19 AM Jan 4, 2016, 7:18 AM

        If you do not want to take the gamble with I-frames and want to be certain that your content is found by Google I would use Wistia it comes with everything that you need in order to have a video indexed the proper embed code, video site map and schema  you can use third-party companies like "speechpad" to transcribe what is being spoken. Wistia also offers  A similar service.

        If you do choose to use YouTube  I would reembed the video with embedly rember you will have to create your own video XML sitemap, add your own schema  you may use  to YouTube content to a website without having to worry about Google not being able to index because the I-frame is converted into a readable code.

        This is a great resource on video SEO. Because I can tell you using Frist hand by using this method it will work.

        https://www.distilled.net/blog/video/video-seo-tactics-to-get-ranked/

        Sorry I did not explain more in my first response.

        Tom

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
        • DigitalAnarchy
          DigitalAnarchy @MattRoney last edited by Jan 1, 2016, 12:26 AM Jan 1, 2016, 12:26 AM

          They all sort of help, but basically just reconfirms what's out there... nobody seems to know for sure. It seems iframes sometimes get crawled but sometimes not. For Mobile, Google recommends iframes but doesn't say specifically that they get crawled and then elsewhere they say there's limited support for them.

          It's frustrating Google can't just provide clear guidance on the subject.

          While the answer might be Vzaar or Wistia, they have drawbacks and there are times where YouTube is the better choice even if you use one of the other services. So understanding the best way to embed them seems important.

          BlueprintMarketing 1 Reply Last reply Jan 4, 2016, 7:18 AM Reply Quote 1
          • MattRoney
            MattRoney last edited by Dec 31, 2015, 8:52 PM Dec 31, 2015, 8:52 PM

            Hi Jim!

            Do any of these responses help? 🙂

            DigitalAnarchy 1 Reply Last reply Jan 1, 2016, 12:26 AM Reply Quote 0
            • jtaylormoon
              jtaylormoon last edited by Dec 29, 2015, 5:57 PM Dec 29, 2015, 5:57 PM

              Google actually can crawl iframes, but the support is limited. Try indexing it with robots.txt or add the URL of the frame you'd like to have crawled in Google Webmaster Tools. Since an iframe is basically an HTML document inside an HTML document, it's not going to crawl the whole page together with the iframe, making its SEO value lower than if it were outside the iframe. A good tactic is to also have content surrounding the iframe on page that describes what is inside the iframe.

              And since we're on the topic of videos inside iframes, make sure you have transcripts for it. Google does use those as well as deaf users, so you're doing a good turn for your client and for those with disabilities.

              But to answer the root of your question, you're right we don't actually know if Google has a system setup to specifically make it easier to crawl Youtube videos inside iframes. As transparent as Google has been this past year they're still pretty mysterious overall.

              DigitalAnarchy 1 Reply Last reply Jan 10, 2016, 10:46 PM Reply Quote 1
              • BlueprintMarketing
                BlueprintMarketing last edited by Dec 29, 2015, 3:42 AM Dec 29, 2015, 3:42 AM

                iframes do not get crawled but there are other ways or Google to see videos that link back to your site Moz uses Wistia.com  they are spectacular and their embed code and site map make them easily findable

                1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • 1 / 1
                1 out of 7
                • First post
                  1/7
                  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

                • TimDickey

                  Any crawl issues with TLS 1.3?

                  Not a techie here...maybe this is to be expected, but ever since one of my client sites has switched to TLS 1.3, I've had a couple of crawl issues and other hiccups. First, I noticed that I can't use HTTPSTATUS.io any more...it renders an error message for URLs on the site in question. I wrote to their support desk and they said they haven't updated to 1.3 yet. Bummer, because I loved httpstatus.io's functionality, esp. getting bulk reports. Also, my Moz campaign crawls were failing. We are setting up a robots.txt directive to allow rogerbot (and the other bot), and will see if that works. These fails are consistent with the date we switched to 1.3, and some testing confirmed it. Anyone else seeing these types of issues, and can suggest any workarounds, solves, hacks to make my life easier? (including an alternative to httpstatus.io...I have and use screaming frog...not as slick, I'm afraid!) Do you think there was a configuration error with the client's TLS 1.3 upgrade, or maybe they're using a problematic/older version of 1.3?? Thanks -

                  Technical SEO | May 14, 2021, 5:36 PM | TimDickey
                  0
                • 21centuryweb

                  Why images are not getting indexed and showing in Google webmaster

                  Hi, I would like to ask why our website images not indexing in Google. I have shared the following screenshot of the search console.  https://www.screencast.com/t/yKoCBT6Q8Upw Last week (Friday 14 Sept 2018) it was showing 23.5K out 31K were submitted and indexed by Google. But now, it is showing only 1K 😞 Can you please let me know why might this happen, why images are not getting indexed and showing in Google webmaster.

                  Technical SEO | Sep 22, 2018, 3:56 AM | 21centuryweb
                  0
                • jasny

                  How can I get a photo album indexed by Google?

                  We have a lot of photos on our website. Unfortunately most of them don't seem to be indexed by Google. We run a party website. One of the things we do, is take pictures at events and put them on the site. An event page with a photo album, can have anywhere between 100 and 750 photo's. For each foto's there is a thumbnail on the page. The thumbnails are lazy loaded by showing a placeholder and loading the picture right before it comes onscreen. There is no pagination of infinite scrolling. Thumbnails don't have an alt text. Each thumbnail links to a picture page. This page only shows the base HTML structure (menu, etc), the image and a close button. The image has a src attribute with full size image, a srcset with several sizes for responsive design and an alt text. There is no real textual content on an image page. (Note that when a user clicks on the thumbnail, the large image is loaded using JavaScript and we mimic the page change. I think it doesn't matter, but am unsure.) I'd like that full size images should be indexed by Google and found with Google image search. Thumbnails should not be indexed (or ignored). Unfortunately most pictures aren't found or their thumbnail is shown. Moz is giving telling me that all the picture pages are duplicate content (19,521 issues), as they are all the same with the exception of the image. The page title isn't the same but similar for all images of an album. Example: On the "A day at the park" event page, we have 136 pictures. A site search on "a day at the park" foto, only reveals two photo's of the albums. 3QolbbI.png QTQVxqY.jpg mwEG90S.jpg

                  Technical SEO | Aug 2, 2016, 12:32 PM | jasny
                  0
                • Tz_Seo

                  How google crawls images and which url shows as source?

                  Hi, I noticed that some websites host their images to a different url than the one their actually website is hosted but in the end google link to the one that the site is hosted. Here is an example: This is a page of a hotel in booking.com: http://www.booking.com/hotel/us/harrah-s-caesars-palace.en-gb.html When I try a search for this hotel in google images it shows up one of the images of the slideshow. When I click on the image on Google search, if I choose the Visit Page button it links to the url above but the actual image is located in a totally different url: http://r-ec.bstatic.com/images/hotel/840x460/135/13526198.jpg My question is can you host your images to one site but show it to another site and in the end google will lead to the second one?

                  Technical SEO | Feb 15, 2016, 6:52 AM | Tz_Seo
                  0
                • Taswirh

                  Expired domain 404 crawl error

                  I recently purchased a Expired domain from auction and after I started my new site on it, I am noticing 500+ "not found" errors in Google Webmaster Tools, which are generating from the previous owner's contents.Should I use a redirection plugin to redirect those non-exist posts to any new post(s) of my site? or I should use a 301 redirect? or I should leave them just as it is without taking further action? Please advise.

                  Technical SEO | Jul 19, 2014, 8:29 PM | Taswirh
                  1
                • rahulchowdhury

                  Unnecessary pages getting indexed in Google for my blog

                  I have a blog dapazze.com and I am suffering from a problem for a long time. I found out that Google have indexed hundreds of replytocom links and images attachment pages for my blog. I had to remove these pages manually using the URL removal tool. I had used "Disallow: ?replytocom" in my robots.txt, but Google disobeyed it. After that, I removed the parameter from my blog completely using the SEO by Yoast plugin. But now I see that Google has again started indexing these links even after they are not present in my blog (I use #comment). Google have also indexed many of my admin and plugin pages, whereas they are disallowed in my robots.txt file. Have a look at my robots.txt file here: http://dapazze.com/robots.txt Please help me out to solve this problem permanently?

                  Technical SEO | Mar 13, 2013, 3:49 AM | rahulchowdhury
                  0
                • lemonz

                  How does Google Crawl Multi-Regional Sites?

                  I've been reading up on this on Webmaster Tools but just wanted to see if anyone could explain it a bit better. I have a website which is going live soon which is going to be set up to redirect to a localised URL based on the IP address i.e. NZ IP ranges will go to .co.nz, Aus IP addresses would go to .com.au and then USA or other non-specified IP addresses will go to the .com address. There is a single CMS installation for the website. Does this impact the way in which Google is able to search the site? Will all domains be crawled or just one? Any help would be great - thanks!

                  Technical SEO | Oct 2, 2012, 9:16 PM | lemonz
                  0
                • Tug-Agency

                  Video Sitemaps <video:content_loc>and<video:player_loc></video:player_loc></video:content_loc>

                  Hi guys, If I'm creating a video sitemap do I need to use both: video:content_locandvideo:player_loc</video:player_loc></video:content_loc> Or could I just use video:content_loc?</video:content_loc> Thanks

                  Technical SEO | Jan 18, 2012, 10:33 AM | Tug-Agency
                  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
                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.