Video XML Sitemap
-
I've been recently been information by our dev team that we are not allowed legally to make our raw video files available in a video XML sitemap...This is one of the required tags. Has anyone run into a similar situation and has figured out a way around it?
Any ideas would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks!
Margarita
-
This is exactly what I needed! Thank you!!!!
-
Thank you so much, Phil. That's correct, the files are already in .mp4 format. Your answer below is perfect. I provided examples of big publishers who have no problem sharing their video locations. We will see how it goes! Just another battle as an in-house SEO. Thanks again!
-Margarita
-
I don't think Margarita means the "unrendered" files, but rather the video files used within the embedded player - which will be .mp4 or .flv or .mov etc. References to these files are required as part of a video sitemap as a video:content_locelement. </video:content_loc>
-
Hi Margarita,
So - firstly, I can't quite understand the logic behind your Dev teams concerns here - as anyone knowledgable enough to find your video sitemap and pull the file URL from there will also be knowledgeable enough to look through your source code and rip the video file through the embedded player. If somebody really wants to download your content, they will - and a video sitemap listing the URLs of the mp4/mov files isn't going to be advertisment for people to do this.
If, in another attempt to prevent piracy, the dev teams are delivering the video content dynamically via JS - you're going to face another issue as the videos may not get indexed.
However, all that said... there is a way round this which may pacify your dev teams and still get the rich snippet results you're after - and that is including a video:player_locelement in the sitemap, rather than a video:content_locelement. video:player_locshould point to a specific embedded player for a specific video -e.g. an .swf flash file or a dynamic HTML5 player e.g. http://player.vimeo.com/video/36862925.</video:player_loc></video:content_loc></video:player_loc>
This will prevent users from finding the original video files outside the context of the embedded player, but i should add that it's not an effective block against piracy.
I hope that's useful, let me know if you have any more questions.
Cheers,
Phil.
-
" raw video files" as in pre- rendered?
- Illegal? No
- Impractical? Yes
Sounds like your dev team is lazy. Tell them to convert to videos to .mp4 and go from there.
-
nope, those raw files exist. They don't want to share them with the public. Legally is the only answer I got...I think it has to do in part with them being afraid of people trying to download the videos.
-
What do they mean legally? Maybe they mean technically can't generate them, or they are over the 50mrg limit or something like that according to Google's rules?
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
-
Sitemap - What are the recommendations on the number of links
Hi, I have a sitemap(s) which is very large(.i.e. 60000) links, is it recommended to have so many links and how come when I do a site search(site:mydomain) the number of links are less than on my site map?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | FreddyKgapza0 -
Best Practice Approaches to Canonicals vs. Indexing in Google Sitemap vs. No Follow Tags
Hi There, I am working on the following website: https://wave.com.au/ I have become aware that there are different pages that are competing for the same keywords. For example, I just started to update a core, category page - Anaesthetics (https://wave.com.au/job-specialties/anaesthetics/) to focus mainly around the keywords ‘Anaesthetist Jobs’. But I have recognized that there are ongoing landing pages that contain pretty similar content: https://wave.com.au/anaesthetists/ https://wave.com.au/asa/ We want to direct organic traffic to our core pages e.g. (https://wave.com.au/job-specialties/anaesthetics/). This then leads me to have to deal with the duplicate pages with either a canonical link (content manageable) or maybe alternatively adding a no-follow tag or updating the robots.txt. Our resident developer also suggested that it might be good to use Google Index in the sitemap to tell Google that these are of less value? What is the best approach? Should I add a canonical link to the landing pages pointing it to the category page? Or alternatively, should I use the Google Index? Or even another approach? Any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Wavelength_International0 -
Sitemap Indexed Pages, Google Glitch or Problem With Site?
Hello, I have a quick question about our Sitemap Web Pages Indexed status in Google Search Console. Because of the drastic drop I can't tell if this is a glitch or a serious issue. When you look at the attached image you can see that under Sitemaps Web Pages Indexed has dropped suddenly on 3/12/17 from 6029 to 540. Our Index status shows 7K+ indexed. Other than product updates/additions and homepage layout updates there have been no significant changes to this website. If it helps we are operating on the Volusion platform. Thanks for your help! -Ryan rou1zMs
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | rrhansen0 -
Can submitting sitemap to Google webmaster improve SEO?
Can creating fresh sitemap and submitting to Google webmaster improve SEO?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | chanel270 -
Using Folkd for Video Backlink
Hi Mozzers, What are your thoughts on using www.folkd.com for video SEO? We have a few company videos and would like to possibly get a backlink by either embedding one of our youtube videos on our site or self hosting the video. Are bookmarking sites like this spammy?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Travis-W0 -
How to stop pages being crawled from xml feed?
We have a site that has an xml feed going out to many other sites.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | jazavide
The xml feed is behind a password protected page so cannot use a cannonical link to point back to original url. How do we stop the pages being crawled on all of the sites using the xml feed? as with hundreds using it after launch it will cause instant duplicate content issues? Thanks0 -
Sitemap or Sitemaps for Magento and Wordpress?
I'm trying to figure out what to do with our sitemap situation. We have a magento install for our shopping cart
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | chrishansen
sdhydroponics.com
and a wordpress install on
sdhydroponics.com/resources In Magento we get the XML sitemap manually by going to Catalog => Google Sitemap => Add Sitemap In wordpress we use Google XML sitemaps plugin. My questions are: Do I need both of these sitemaps? Or can I use one or the other? If I use both, do I make one sitemap1.xml and the other sitemap2.xml and drop them in the root? How do I make sure google knows I have 2 sitemaps? Anything else I should know? Thank You0 -
Which is best structure for Multiple XML Sitemap?
I have read such a great blog posts on Multiple XML Sitemaps on following websites before a week. SEOmoz Distilled Google Webmaster Central Blog Search Engine Land SEO Inc I have created multiple XML sitemaps for my eCommerce website with following structure and submitted to Google webmaster tools. http://www.vistastores.com/main_sitemap.xml http://www.vistastores.com/products_sitemap.xml But, I am not satisfy with my second XML sitemap because it contain more than 7K+ product page URLs and looks like very slow crawling by Google! I want to separate my XML sitemap with following structure. With Root Level Category http://www.vistastores.com/outdoor_sitemap.xml http://www.vistastores.com/furniture_sitemap.xml http://www.vistastores.com/kitchen_dining_sitemap.xml http://www.vistastores.com/home_decor_sitemap.xml OR::: End Level Category http://www.vistastores.com/table_lamps_sitemap.xml http://www.vistastores.com/floor_lamps_sitemap.xml . . . . . . . etc.... So, Which is best structure for Multiple XML Sitemap?
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CommercePundit0