Google Video Sitemaps is an extension of the Sitemap protocol that enables you to publish and syndicate online video content and its relevant metadata to Google in order to make it searchable in the Google Video index. You can use a Video Sitemap to add descriptive information - such as a video's title, description, duration, etc. - that makes it easier for users to find a particular piece of content. When a user finds your video through Google, they will be linked to your hosted environments for the full playback.
When you submit a Video Sitemap to Google, we will make the included video URLs searchable on Google Video. Search results will contain a thumbnail image (provided by you or autogenerated by Google) of your video content, as well as information (such as title) contained in your Video Sitemap. In addition, your video may also appear in other Google search products. During this beta period, we can't predict or guarantee when or if your videos will be added to our index, but as we refine our product, we expect both coverage and indexing speed to improve.
Google can crawl the following video file types: .mpg, .mpeg, .mp4, .mov, .wmv, .asf, .avi, .ra, .ram, .rm, .flv. All files must be accessible via HTTP. Metafiles that require a download of the source via streaming protocols are not supported at this time.
How to Create Video Sitemap?
A Video Sitemap uses the Sitemap protocol, with additional Video-specific tags as defined below. In its simplest form, a Video Sitemap can include a single tag to let Google know there is a video playable at a specific landing page URL. Optional fields let you specify other attributes of the video available on that page. The less information you provide in the Sitemap extension, the more Google will have to do to try to discover and extract that information. Google may use text available on your video's page rather than the text you supply in the Video Sitemap, if this differs.
Once you have created your video Sitemap, you can submit it to Google using Webmaster Tools.
Here is a sample of a Video Sitemap entry using Video-specific tags:
<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>My funny 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>A really awesome video</video:description> </video:video></url></urlset>
Video-specific tag definitions
| Tag | Required? | Description |
| <loc> | Yes | The <loc> tag specifies the landing page (aka play page, referrer page) for the video. When a user clicks on a video result on http://video.google.com, they will be sent to this landing page. |
| <video:video> | Required | |
| Optional | The URL of the actual video content. | |
| Optional | A URL pointing to a player for the video. The most common case for this is with Flash video. The URL of the SWF file that plays your video should be specified in <video:player_loc> and the URL of the FLV (actual video file) would be specified in <video:content_loc>. The required attribute allow_embed specifies whether Google can embed the video in search results. Allowed values are "Yes" or "No". | |
| Optional | A URL pointing to the URL for the video thumbnail image file. This allows you to suggest the thumbnail you want displayed in search results. If you provide a <video:content_loc> tag, Google will attempt to generate a set of representative thumbnail images from your actual video content. However, we strongly recommended that you provide a thumbnail URL to increase the likelihood of your video being included in the video index. | |
| Optional | The title of the video. Limited to 100 characters. | |
| Optional | The description of the video. Descriptions longer than 2048 characters will be truncated. | |
| Optional | Whether the video is suitable for viewing by children. Allowed values are "Yes" or "No". | |
| Optional | The duration of the video in seconds. Value must be between 0 and 28800 (8 hours). Non-digit characters are disallowed. |
When creating your Video Sitemap, keep in mind the following:
- A Video Sitemap should contain only URLs that refer to video content. Video content includes web pages which embed video, URLs to players for video, or the URLs of raw video content hosted on your site. If Google cannot discover video content at the URLs you provide, those records will be ignored by Googlebot.
- Since each video is uniquely identified by its content URL (the location of the actual video file) or, if a content URL is not present, a player URL (a URL pointing to a player for the video), we strongly recommend including either the <video:player_loc> or <video:content_loc> tags. If these tags are omitted and we can't find this information, we'll be unable to index your video.
- Each Sitemap file that you provide must have no more than 50,000 video items and must be no larger than 10MB uncompressed. An individual video file or thumbnail (specified in the <video:content_loc> and <video:thumbnail_loc> tags, respectively) can be no larger than 30MB. If you have more than 50,000 videos, you can submit multiple Sitemaps and a Sitemap index file.
- Google can crawl the following video file types: .mpg, .mpeg, .mp4, .mov, .wmv, .asf, .avi, .ra, .ram, .rm, .flv. All files must be accessible via HTTP. Metafiles that require a download of the source via streaming protocols are not supported.
- The URLs included in the Sitemap must have their robots.txt file set appropriately for User-agent "Googlebot".
How to submit a Video Sitemap to Google?
- Create a Video Sitemap and save it at a publicly accessible URL. Currently, Google cannot retrieve files from URLs that are protected by authentication (even basic HTTP authentication). The feed and the URLs pointed to by the feed must have their robots.txt file set appropriately for User-agent "Googlebot".
- Sign into Google webmaster tools with your Google Account, and make sure you have added your site to your account.
- Click Add a Sitemap beside the site.
- Select Video Sitemap.
- Type the URL to your Video Sitemap in the provided field. Make sure you include the entire URL, such as "http://www.example.com/videofeed.xml".
- Click Add Video Sitemap.
When you initially add a Sitemap, the status displays as Pending. Once Google processes your Video Sitemap (which may take several hours), this status will change to either OK or to an error. If you receive an error, click on it to view additional information. Not all errors are critical, and processing may complete even if you receive an error.
What does Google do with my Video Sitemap after submission?
After you submit a Video Sitemap, our crawlers will periodically retrieve your Sitemap and validate its format. If the Video Sitemap has any errors, they will be reported on the Sitemaps page in your account. After validating the Sitemap format, our crawlers will download the video files (if the URLs to the raw video file are supplied in the
Google Video's search algorithm is based on the the video file itself and the video metadata in the Sitemap that is associated with each feed. If provided in your Video Sitemap, your video files are downloaded in order to enhance the searchability of the video and to automatically generate a representative thumbnail image for the video if one is not provided.
If you want Google Video to host your content, you can upload your content directly to Google Video instead of submitting a Sitemap.
Source From:- Google WebMaster Blog
Composed By :- Chirag Vyas (Video SEO SPECIALIST, DIRECT TO
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Great Post, i think now revolution in video search by Google, useful info about video sitemap.