Video best practices

Of the billions of Google searches done every day, many are looking for video content. Following the best practices listed here (as well as our usual Webmaster Guidelines) can increase the likelihood that your videos will be returned in search results.

Video results in Google Search appear both in combined Search results and in Video Search results. When a user clicks the video result they will be taken to your page, where they can watch your video.

How Google crawls a video

In order to expose a video in search results, Google must understand something about the video. Google can extract information about a video in the following ways:

• Google can crawl the video (if in a supported video encoding) and extract a thumbnail and preview. Google can also extract some limited meaning from the audio and video of the file.
• Google can extract information from the page hosting the video, including the page text and meta tags.
• Google can use structured data (VideoObject) or video sitemap associated with the video.

About Video Search results

How, or if, your video shows up on search depends on how much information you provide to Google. Google requires two pieces of information to expose your video in search results: a thumbnail image and a link to the actual video file. However, the more information you provide, the better your search result experience.

Here are the two basic levels of video search appearance: 

• Basic appearance: If you provide the absolute minimum information to Google, your video can appear in combined search results and video search results with a thumbnail image and a link. You will not get any enhanced features such as video preview or content parsing. Absolute minimum information is a thumbnail image and a link to a video file.

  
  Example basic video result

• Enhanced appearance: If you provide more information, Google can provide more features for your video, such as video preview, video length, video date and provider information, the ability to restrict search results based on the user's country or search device, and more.

  
  Example enhanced desktop video result

  
  Example enhanced mobile video result

Best practices

Minimum requirements for a video search result:

If you want your video to be eligible for search results:

• Google must be able to find the video. Videos are identified in the page by the presence of an HTML tag, for example: <video>, <embed>, or <object>. Ensure that the page doesn't require complex user actions or specific URL fragments to load, or Google might not find it. Tip: Although we can find videos embedded in a page through natural crawling, you can help us find your videos by posting a video sitemap.
• You must provide a high-quality thumbnail image for the video.
• Make sure that each video lives in a publicly available page where users can watch the video. The page should not be require a login by the user. The page should also not be blocked by robots.txt or noindex (it must be accessible by Google).
• The video content should apply specifically to the content of its host page. For example, if you have a recipe page for peach pie, don't embed a video about pastries in general.
• Ensure that any information you provide in a video sitemap or video markup is consistent with the actual video content.

For best results:

If you take these extra steps, Google can provide better search results for your video:

• Ensure that Google can crawl your video file. If Google can crawl it, we can generate a thumbnail image for you and provide other features.
• Avoid complicated logic or scripting to show or hide videos. Google might not find all your videos if we depend on complex user interactions of conditional resource loading.
• Provide a good user experience on your video hosting pages.
• Provide structured data, a video sitemap, or both, describing your video. Structured data is best when Google already knows about the page; a sitemap is good for helping Google find new content or learn about new or changed content. Some sites use both: on-page structured data for all videos plus a video sitemap to tell Google about any new, time-sensitive, or hard-to-find videos.
  • Test your structured data or sitemaps:
    • To test your video structured data, use the Rich Results test.
    • To test or submit sitemaps or feeds, first add and verify your site in Search Console. Make sure that you have verified both the site that contains the sitemap or feed and all of the sites referenced in the sitemap or feed. Test or submit your sitemap in the Search Console Sitemaps tool.
• Provide unique descriptive data for each video in your structured data or sitemap.
• Tell Google about any updates to your content.
• Handle removed videos appropriately.
• Add and verify your site in Google Search Console. Search Console shows you any problems that Google encounters when crawling your site. If you are using sitemaps, submit them either through Search Console, or by listing them in the robots.txt file.
• Read about common video indexing mistakes.
• If you have a live video, you can tag it as live streaming in search results.

Provide a high-quality thumbnail for your video

To be eligible to appear in Google Video Search results, a video must have a thumbnail image that can be shown in search results.

You can provide (or enable) a thumbnail in several ways:

• If using the <video> HTML tag, specify the poster attribute.
• In a video sitemap, specify <video:thumbnail_loc>
• In structured data, specify VideoObject.thumbnailUrl
• Provide a video in a crawlable format and we can generate a thumbnail for you.

Preferred formats: JPG, PNG

Size: From 160x90 to 1920x1080 pixels

Location: The preview thumbnail must be accessible by Googlebot (that is, not blocked by robots.txt or a login requirement).

Make your video crawlable

If Google can crawl your video, we can generate a thumbnail image for you, enable video preview, and provide other features.

To make your video crawlable:

• The video must be in a supported format.
• The video host page and streaming file bytes must not be blocked to Google. (Blocked means that the page or file are paywall-protected, login required, noindex or robots.txt blocked.)
• The video host page and the server streaming the actual video must have the bandwidth to be crawled. So if your landing page at example.com/puppies.html has an embedded puppies video served by somestreamingservice.com, both example.com and somestreamingservice.com must be unblocked and have available server load.

Supported video encodings

Google can crawl the following video file types: .3g2, .3gp2, .3gp, .3gpp, .asf, .avi, .divx, .f4v, .flv, .m2v,, .m3u8, .m4v, .mkv, .mov, .mp4, .mpe, .mpeg, .mpg, .ogv, .qvt, .ram, .rm, .vob, .webm, .wmv, .xap

Describe your video using structured data or a video sitemap

You can provide additional information about your video to Google using structured data, a video sitemap, or both. Providing this extra information can enable more features in search results and help us understand and rank your video better.

Both techniques can expose the same information to Google, but a video sitemap can be useful for helping Google find new content or updated content more quickly, while structured data might be more familiar to some people than sitemaps, and be more consistent with their website's use of structured data to enable rich results. You can use both techniques for your website, but if you do, be sure that your data is consistent in both places.

Structured data

Add structured data describing your video on the hosting page. Structured data is information that you provide according to a well-defined format using either tags or JSON. When Google crawls the page, it can read and understand that format to extract information about your video.

There are several formats that you can use, but Google strongly recommends using schema.org's VideoObject syntax in JSON-LD format.

<html>
<head>
  <title>Schnitzel in an hour</title>
</head>
<body>
  <script type="application/ld+json">
  {
    "@context": "http://schema.org",
    "@type": "VideoObject",
    "name": "Schnitzel Stories",
    "description": "How to make fantastic schnitzel in just one hour",
    "thumbnailUrl": "https://example.com/imgs/schnitzel-small.jpg",
    "uploadDate": "2015-02-05T08:00:00+08:00",
    "duration": "PT1M33S",
    "contentUrl": "https://streamserver.example.com/schnitzel.mp4"
  }
  </script>
  <h1>Everybody loves schnitzel</h1>

  ... omitted schnitzel-related page content...

  <video width="420"
      src="https://streamserver.example.com/schnitzel.mp4"
      poster="https://example.com/imgs/schnitzel-small.jpg"/>
</body>
</html>

Video sitemap

A video sitemap is an XML sitemap that Google uses to find videos on your site, and can also provide information about a video to Google. A video sitemap entry can describe a video the same way as a VideoObject structured data element. The advantage of using a video sitemap is that it also helps Google find new or updated videos, and that it can describe many videos in one file rather than requiring Google to crawl each page and discover changes individually.

Learn how to create a video sitemap.

Updating your content

Notifying Google of Video Updates

You can tell Google when a video has changed, depending on how you helped us find or read your content. If you simply swap out the video URL or source file with no other changes, Google might not notice the change.

• Structured data: When your on-page video structured data changes, Google will see the change the next time it crawls the page. You can notify Google of a changed page by using a normal sitemap or a video sitemap.
• Video sitemaps and mRSS: When you post a video sitemap, Google will periodically recrawl it and update search results with any changed video data. You can also resubmit a sitemap or notify Google of a changed sitemap to request an immediate recrawl. Find out more about submitting sitemaps and using HTTP requests to update sitemaps.

Removing a video

We recommend the following options to remove a video from your site:

• Return an 404 (Not found) HTTP status code for any landing page that contains a removed or expired video. In addition to the 404 response code, you can still return the HTML of the page to make the change transparent to most users.
• Indicate an expiration dates in your schema.org structured data, video sitemap (use the <video:expiration_date> element), or mRSS feed (<dcterms:valid> tag). Here is an example of a video sitemap with a video that expired in November 2009:

  <urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"
          xmlns:video="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-video/1.1"> 
    <url> 
      <loc>http://www.example.com/videos/some_video_landing_page.html</loc>
      <video:video>
        <video:thumbnail_loc>
            http://www.example.com/thumbs/123.jpg
        </video:thumbnail_loc> 
        <video:title>
            Grilling steaks for summer
        </video:title>
        <video:description>
            Bob shows you how to grill steaks perfectly every time
        </video:description>
        <video:player_loc>
            http://www.example.com/videoplayer?video=123
        </video:player_loc>
        <video:expiration_date>2009-11-05T19:20:30+08:00</video:expiration_date>
      </video:video> 
    </url> 
  </urlset>
  

Avoid using complex video loading conditionals

When designing your site, configure your video pages without any overly complex user interaction or conditions required to load a video. For instance, if you are using complicated JavaScript to embed video objects from within JavaScript under only certain circumstances (for example, using hash tags in the URL), then it's also possible that we will not find all your videos. This is especially important if you aren't using a sitemap to list the video.

Create a great user experience on your video pages

In addition to having great video, you should think about the design of the HTML pages around your content. For example, consider the following:

• Create a standalone landing page for each video, where you can gather all its related information. If you do this, be sure to provide unique information—such as descriptive titles and captions—on each page.
• Make it as easy as possible for users to find and play the videos on each landing page. The presence of a prominent, embedded video player using widely supported video formats can make your videos more attractive to users and easier for Google to index.

Restrict users by platform

You can restrict search results for your video based on the searcher's platform. Platforms include computer browsers, mobile device browsers, and television browsers.

Video Platform Restrictions

<url>
  <loc>http://www.example.com/videos/some_video_landing_page.html</loc>
  <video:video>
    <video:thumbnail_loc>
        http://www.example.com/thumbs/123.jpg
    </video:thumbnail_loc>
    <video:title>Grilling steaks for summer</video:title>
    <video:description>
        Bob shows you how to get perfectly done steaks every time
    </video:description>
    <video:player_loc>
        http://www.example.com/videoplayer?video=123
    </video:player_loc>
    <video:platform relationship="allow">web mobile</video:platform>
  </video:video>
</url>

Restrict users by country

You can restrict search results for your video based on the searcher's location. If your video does not have any country restrictions, you should omit the country restriction tags.

Video Country Restrictions

   <url> 
     <loc>http://www.example.com/videos/some_video_landing_page.html</loc>
     <video:video>
       <video:thumbnail_loc>
           http://www.example.com/thumbs/123.jpg
       </video:thumbnail_loc> 
       <video:title>Grilling steaks for summer</video:title>
       <video:description>
           Bob shows you how to get perfectly done steaks every time
       </video:description>
       <video:player_loc>
           http://www.example.com/player?video=123
       </video:player_loc>
       <video:restriction relationship="allow">ca mx</video:restriction> 
     </video:video> 
   </url>

  <item xmlns:media="http://search.yahoo.com/mrss/" xmlns:dcterms="http://purl.org/dc/terms/">
    <link>http://www.example.com/examples/mrss/example.html</link>
    <media:content url="http://www.example.com/examples/mrss/example.mp4"
                   fileSize="405321" type="video/x-flv" height="240"
                   width="320" duration="120" medium="video"
                   isDefault="true">
      <media:title>Grilling Steaks for Summer</media:title>
      <media:description>
          Get perfectly done steaks every time
      </media:description>
      <media:thumbnail
          url="http://www.example.com/examples/mrss/example.png"
          height="120" width="160"/>
    </media:content>
    <media:restriction relationship="deny" type="country">us ca</media:restriction>
  </item>

Which URL is which?

There are several URLs that can be associated with a video file on the page. Here is a summary of most of them:

When including structured data, a video sitemap, or a sitemap alternate, you should point to the embedded player or file bytes, as appropriate for the field.

Block a video from Google Search results

If you want to hide a video from Google Search results, there are a few methods to do so:

• Put up some kind of login screen for the host page and video file.
• Add a country restriction in a video sitemap for the video, and specify an empty allow list:
  <video:restriction relationship="allow"></video:restriction>
• Use robots.txt to block the source video and/or the host page. If the video and host page are the same site, block the source file URL (the contentUrl address) and the host page URL. If the video is hosted on a different CDN, just block the host/player page.
• Return a noindex HTTP response for the host page and the file (if the file exists on your page).

Note that none of these methods prevent another page from linking to your video or page.

Common video indexing mistakes

These are some of the most common video indexing mistakes we have seen and how we suggest you resolve them to increase the likelihood that your videos will be shown in search results. You should also take a look at our Webmaster Guidelines.

Common Video Indexing Pitfalls

Blocking resources with robots.txt

A common practice is to use robots.txt to prevent search engines from crawling JavaScript, video, and image files. In order for Google to index a video, we must be able to see the thumbnail specified in your structured data or sitemap, the page the video is on, the video itself, and any JavaScript or other resources needed to load the video. Make sure that your robots.txt rules do not block any of these video-related resources.

If you are using video sitemaps or mRSS, make sure that Google can access any sitemap or mRSS feed that you submit. If these are blocked by robots.txt, we will not be able to read them.

Learn more about robots.txt.

Low-quality thumbnail images

We accept thumbnails of any image format, but find that .png and .jpg images work best. Images must be at least 160x90 pixels, and no more than 1920x1080 pixels.

Duplicate thumbnails, titles, or descriptions

Using the same thumbnail, title, or description for different videos can affect video indexing and can be confusing to users. Make sure that the data for each video is unique. For episodic content, a common problem is multiple videos with the same title-screen thumbnail.

Setting an expiration date in the past

When Google sees a video with an expiration date in the past, we will not include the video in any search results. This includes expiration dates from sitemaps, on-page structured data, and the meta expiration tag in the site header. Make sure that your expiration dates are correct for each video. While this is useful if your video is no longer available after the expiration date, it's easy to accidentally setting the date to the past for an available video. If a video does not expire, do not include any expiration information.

Listing removed videos

When an embedded video has been removed from a page, some sites use a Flash player to tell users that the video is no longer available. This can be problematic for search engines, and therefore, we recommend the following options:

• Return a 404 (Not found) HTTP status code for any landing page that contains a removed or expired video. In addition to the 404 response code, you can still return the HTML of the page to make this transparent to most users.
• Indicate expiration dates in on-page structured data, video sitemaps (use the <video:expiration_date> element), or mRSS feed (<dcterms:valid> tag) submitted to Google.

Complex JavaScript and URL fragments

When designing your site, it's important to configure your video pages without any overly complex JavaScript. If you are using overly complicated JavaScript to embed video objects from within JavaScript under only certain circumstances, then it's also possible that we will not correctly index your videos. URLs for content or landing-pages that require 'hash marks' or fragment identifiers are not supported. Also, using Flash on the page can prevent efficient indexing. For best results, show your video title and description in plain HTML markup rather than using Flash.

If you are using on-page structured data, the structured data should be present without running Flash or other embedded players.

Small, hidden, or difficult to find videos

Make sure that your videos are visible and easy to find on your video pages. Google suggests using a standalone page for each video with a descriptive title or description unique to each individual video. Videos should be prominent on the page and should not be hidden or difficult to find.