Last week, Google announced the end of some of its services, and among them was the ability for users to upload videos to Google Video. They said they would be refocusing their attention on building a more comprehensive video search engine, and why not? They’ve already got YouTube.
Just because they’re putting a stop to uploading videos to Google Video, doesn’t mean that you can’t still submit your videos to them. By the way, Google Video Product Manager Amit Paunikar notes that Google Video search algorithms power YouTube as well as universal search.
Google has simplified the process for submitting sitemaps, and extended Video sitemaps support to include Media RSS feed. That said, Google offers the advice of including the following things in your sitemaps to make your videos easier to find:
1. Landing page URL: This is the page where the video is hosted. It’s better to have a unique landing page for each video on your site.
2. Video thumbnail URL: Thumbnails provide a strong visual cue to the user. Your video thumbnail should be representative of a snapshot from the video, and should not be misleading in any way.
3. Title & Description: If these are accurate and descriptive, they not only help Google understand your video, but also help users choose the best video search result. Providing information about category, keyword tags and duration is always helpful.
As I recently discussed, video is becoming increasingly important to search. Making it easier for Google to crawl your videos has to help.
