Google have provided some useful information to help webmasters get video content indexed more effectively.
In order to help Google find your videos they recommend creating a video Sitemap (Information on how to create a video Sitemap is given be Google here). Google state that this provides “essential information” about your site videos including the URLs in which videos can be found as well as keywords, titles, duration of the video and thumbnail images.
On top of you are also able to tell Google how long the video is available which is useful for sites who produce videos that have temporary life span. This allows Google to remove the videos from the index once the videos expire.
Like with the standard XML Sitemap you submit the URL of the Sitemap in Google Webmaster Tools and Google state that it will try an include the videos in their Video Onebox in the search results for a related query.
As Google continues to push universal search results for as many search queries as it can this tip is pretty useful. Although there is likely to be a lot more to getting a video to displaying the Onebox it is well worth creating a video Sitemap if Google are recommending it.
April 29th, 2010 at 9:38 am
Anything that helps the indexing of videos is a very welcome addition, especially as it means people wouldn’t need to use third-parties like YouTube to get their videos into the search results.