Google Video Sitemaps - Anyone have experience with these?

[Reilly]

some guys have experience with Google Video Sitemap?

i uploaded it today - and i would like to have some feedback - i didnÄT fount enough about that cool feature - please - i would like to know if someone had his videos in universal search listed - somthing about time and so on...

[tedster]

I assume you're talking about this information for the field in the XML Video Sitemap:

<video:duration> - Optional - The duration of the video in seconds. Value must be between 0 and 28800 (8 hours). Non-digit characters are disallowed.

How can I create a Video Sitemap? [google.com]

Note that this helps your video get indexed in Google's Video Search. Whether it appears in Universal Search depends on a whole extra and complex algorithm. I suppose having the description field is a help for indexing and relevance for any given search, but I think popularity and links will mean the most.

[Robert Charlton]

Take a look at this thread...

Google Video Sitemaps
Google sitemaps submissions now available for video content
[webmasterworld.com...]

I don't find much other discussion on these, as they appear to be for sites hosting their own video, and I'd guess the majority of users are still using video aggregators like You Tube. I'd be interested too in whether they help independent sites get their video indexed in Universal Search results.

[Reilly]

ok, thanks - i will search also some infos - about apearing in universal search like youtube vids ...

[Andem]

I created and submitted a video sitemap containing around 400 videos we host on 26 Dec 2007 and Google has accepted the sitemap. It contains no errors according to Webmaster Tools and contains all of the required fields including most optional fields.

We are still limited to 0 indexed, but I did find a web site a few weeks ago which had its videos accepted and listed in Google Video Search. (This was in a usenet posting).

I'm still trying to figure out what we're doing wrong. They are all supported video types.

[Robert Charlton]

As I remember, Google is only including the main video aggregators... perhaps just YouTube and Google Video, in fact... in current Google Universal Search results.

I suspect Google is still working out how to normalize searches for videos from those sites and fit them into their regular serps... but that they're also gathering data for "outside"-hosted videos and working on ways of ranking them. Google Video Search is a good place for them to experiment. It's likely to be a while before these videos start showing up on regular Google serps.

It's likely that, for outside videos in Universal Search, big suppliers will initially have an advantage, but it may be that the first independently-hosted videos we see are those that happen to go viral via social media and also have all video sitemap data, as well as links and on-site optimization, in order.

[edited by: Robert_Charlton at 11:38 pm (utc) on Mar. 3, 2008]

[Reilly]

guys, i mean something that isn't youtube or something else - thats a website like mine and yours ...

source:
[googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com...]

Video results
If you have video content, you can host it on Google Video, YouTube, or a number of other video hosting providers. If the video is a relevant result for the query, searchers can play the video directly from the search results page (for Google Video and YouTube)or can view a thumbnail of the video then click over to the player for other hosting providers. You can easily upload videos to Google Video or to YouTube.

someone has experiences about that ?

[edited by: tedster at 4:53 pm (utc) on Mar. 4, 2008]

[jetteroheller]

I have implemented them Febuary 9th 2007, all okay in webmaster console, but site:example.com shows nothing at video search.

[Reilly]

did you used

<video:player_loc allow_embed="yes"> ... </video:player_loc>

the allow_embed="yes" tag ?

[jetteroheller]

did you used
<video:player_loc allow_embed="yes"> ... </video:player_loc>

the allow_embed="yes" tag ?

All my videos are wmv and implemented with
<a href=page-name.wmv>Video (4.4 MB)</a>

So there is no video player to specify.
I tested withoud player location, only allow_embed="yes"
but this did not work at the Google Webmaster console

[Reilly]

did the Googlebit crawled your Videos ?

i sent my Sitemap yesterday and 20 minutes later the Googlebot got them all - i used the Video Sitemap Protocol like it is told here

<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"
xmlns:video="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-video/1.0">
<url>
<loc>http://www.site.com/videos/some_video_landing_page.html</loc>
<video:video>
<video:content_loc>http://www.site.com/video123.flv</video:content_loc>
<video:player_loc allow_embed="yes">http://www.site.com/videoplayer.swf?video=123</video:player_loc>
<video:title>Mein lustiges Video</video:title>
<video:thumbnail_loc>http://www.site.com/thumbs/123.jpg</video:thumbnail_loc>
</video:video>
</url>

<url>
<loc>http://www.site.com/videos/some_other_video_landing_page.html</loc>
<video:video>
<video:content_loc>http://www.site.com/videos/video1.mpg</video:content_loc>
<video:description>Ein tolles Video</video:description>
</video:video>
</url>
</urlset>

google got the files, but i didn't supplied thumbs, description and so on - how long will it take to make Thumbs, Description and so on ? - today i made all by my self - and i hope i get them faster crawled and indexed - video.google.com - would first be enough - but is there anybody outthere who hast such a Pic near the serps ? - or really nobody?

[Reilly]

cool, it takes 2 days to publish all my videos :D - now they need pupolarity and i hope they will become visible in Serps - GREAT - I LOVE IT

[Robert Charlton]

Just did some searching on a 3-word phrase that returns 650K pages and is identified in the AdWords Suggestion Tool as having "Very high advertiser competition" with "Average Search Volume".....

Without the word "video" or "videos" in the search, the first Universal Search video result with a thumbnail image shows up on the bottom of page 16 in the serps, for a metacafe page.

Substituting "video" for the 3rd word in the phrase ("Very high advertiser competition" with "Low Search Volume") and Universal Search video thumbnails return YouTube results start showing up on page 3. As I dug down further, I only saw video aggregator sites, albeit not all YouTube.

Adding "video" as a 4th word following the original three word phrase (an unlikely search) and Universal Search video thumbnails start showing up on position two (page one) of the serps, but again I went down a fair number of pages and only saw video aggregator sites... again, not all YouTube.

[jetteroheller]

Now most of my videos are indexed.

But the referer log file is a mystery

Something like

video.google.com....... -> favicon.ico

How generates a video search result page at video.google an access to the favicon.ico?

[Reilly]

that's when they open a video - and yours is a little preview in the top right CORNER - they get your favicon displayed in the thumb ...

i need informations about ranking of video files - i don't know - how google calculates the ranking of a video files...

[tedster]

Here are two discussions that name several important factors: nearby text, embedded meta data, anchor text, backlinks, age, first and last frame of the video have keywords on the screen, use video sharing sites and include the url to your site.

Optimizing for Google Video [webmasterworld.com]
Optimizing Video for Indexing [webmasterworld.com]

I'd also add that with the rise of YouTube, .flv is rapidly becoming the prevalent video format. Can't hurt to make sure your video is available this way.

[Reilly]

thanks tedster <3 u :D

ok thats enough stuff for some days - i will keep reading - i'm already getting users from video.google.tld - and i have supportet .flv file... i will back in some days :D