Will Panda Demote Your Site If You Embed YouTube Videos?

[Planet13]

Hi there, Everyone:

Is it safe to embed youtube videos on your site, or will Panda slap you for "duplicate content"?

The videos would be demonstrations of certain activities and the videos may have little verbal instruction in them (or the instruction may not be in English).

I would embedded them in pages that have a thorough written description of the activity in the video and a thorough English translation (if the video is not in English).

I would try to have the written text as the main focus of the page, but the videos would be more of a visual demonstration.

Thanks in advance.

_{(Note to mods: I believe I asked a somewhat similar question a while back about the value of embedding videos but that was pre-Panda / Penguin)}

[nomis5]

Embedding YouTube videos doesn't seem to affect my sites either way, Google seems to ignore them as far as ranking is concerned. That's my experience. By the way, I presume you are talking about your own videos and not someone else's. The ones I embed are all mine.

I'm not sure what effect embedding foreign language videos would have.

[Planet13]

@ nomis5

By the way, I presume you are talking about your own videos and not someone else's.

Actually, I was thinking of embedding SOMEONE ELSE'S videos, not mine (since I don't have any videos done yet).

Would that be a problem for Panda?

Thanks in advance.

[aakk9999]

I have seen no adverse effect in case where I have someone else's video embedded.

However, the video makes only a very small percentage of the page (e.g. pages with someone's else video may have 500-1000 words), and further, there are only a few such pages on the site (less than 1%). We also have few pages with our own videos embedded.

But my answer above may not tell you much. For example I do not know what would happen in the following cases:

- if you go and embed other people's videos on lots of pages of the site
- the page on which you embed the video has not much else on it (i.e. not much content beyond the video)
- or even worse, the both (lots of other people's videos that go to thin content pages)

[Sgt_Kickaxe]

Embedding YouTube videos doesn't seem to affect my sites either way, Google seems to ignore them as far as ranking is concerned. That's my experience.

I've shared that experience, you are unlikely to see any direct rankings benefits from simply having the video although if your visitors actually watch them your site metrics might improve a little in terms of time on site. The effects really seem to have been zeroed out by Google.

Several years ago Google adjusted their algorithm to deal with a huge surge in the number of "video sites" that merely displayed videos from youtube and other big video sites. These types of sites worked for a while but haven't in some time, its possible that Google does check for ownership, only Google knows.

[londrum]

you want to start embedding your own videos instead, i've had some success with that. that way they will also show up in google search in their own right.
im always careful to write my URL in text onto the video though, and link to it from the youtube description. you never know how clever google are at working out where the video came from. they should give you an option during the upload to state your website explicitly, but they dont.

[SevenCubed]

I have 1 site that is embedding a YouTube video that does not belong to the site owner. It's going on 3 years now and there hasn't been any adverse effect whatsoever. The site ranks #1 locally on goog.ca for the service term demonstrated in the video and #5 internationally on goog.ca and goog.com for "service-keyword type-keyword video" (the original source is in spot #1).

1) The page that the embedded YouTube video is on has 450 words of related text.
2) The video is a high quality production posted by a U.K. association of this same service (an authority).
3) I place a link to the actual video on the YouTube site right above the embedded player in case someone prefers to watch it at source.
4) It may or may not be relevant but it's high international ranking might be boosted by the extra effort to code the embedded object so that it validates to xhtml 1.1 (the original one on YouTube doesn't). It also passes Section 508 usability validation. Just in case you want it for consideration I'll paste an example. I'll leave in the additional parameters in case you want to tinker with them.

<object type="application/x-shockwave-flash" data="http://www.example.com/x/xxxxxxxxx&amp;hl=en_US&amp;fs=1&amp;rel=0&amp;color1=0x234900&amp;color2=0x4e9e00&amp;border=1" width="637" height="405"><param name="movie" value="http://www.example.com/x/xxxxxxxxx&amp;hl=en_US&amp;fs=1&amp;rel=0&amp;color1=0x234900&amp;color2=0x4e9e00&amp;border=1" /><param name="FlashVars" value="playerMode=embedded" /><span>It appears you do not have, or have disabled, the <a href="http://get.adobe.com/flashplayer/" title="Flash Plugin">Flash</a> plugin that is required for this presentation.</span><param name="wmode" value="transparent" /></object>

I don't think you have anything to be concerned about if it's just a scattering of a few videos here and there as long as there is sufficient content on the page that supports what the video is about.

[Planet13]

Thanks so much for the suggestions!

[nomis5]

I was mucking around with something (can't remember what) in G+ the other day and it asked me if I wanted to associate my YouTube videos with my G+ account, which is also associated with one of my websites.

Previously all my YouTube videos were in a different pseudonym and unrelated to my website except that loads of them appeared on the website.

Now, after associating my G+ account with my YouTube account, all my YouTube videos appear in the SERPS with my real name against them not my pseudonym. I don't really care about that but it does appear that G is interested in associating videos with specific websites and authors.

The net is closing in on those who think they can have anonymity on the internet (absurd idea!). But at the same time it may also indicate that there are plans by G in the future to link the reputation of websites and videos by the same author together. Maybe?