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Video Sitemaps Best Practices from Google Webmaster Tools

Google Video Sitemaps tutorial from Mark Robertson of ReelSEO in video form featuring Google video Product Manager Nelson Lee and Google Partner Rep Amy MacIsaac discussing details of best practices and point out the importance of required elements including video:loc and video:player_loc. There are a list of questions (below) that are addressed in Q&A

Below are a list of questions submitted by participants in the tutorial, you can find answers in the video and in text form at Google Webmaster tools Blog.

  1. Can the source/content of the video (perhaps a third-party vendor) be hosted on another site? For example, can I host my videos on YouTube and still be eligible for Video Search traffic?
  2. If I’m using YouTube to host my videos, can Google verify that I’m the legitimate owner?
  3. Because Google owns YouTube, should users who embed YouTube videos still submit Video Sitemaps or is it unnecessary?
  4. How long does it take for Google to accept and verify a Video Sitemap?
  5. What tags and categories are most important in Video Sitemaps or mRSS? Should I create my own categories or is there a list that I should conform to?
  6. Do I have to use HTML5 to use Video Sitemaps? Does HTML5 help with discovery? Or, if my site is HTML5 compliant, do I still need to submit a Video Sitemap?
  7. If I use an iframe rather than embedding my videos, can Google still find it?
  8. Can I have multiple videos on one URL?
  9. Do I need to specifically create a robots.txt file that allows Googlebot, or do I just need to make sure Googlebot isn’t blocked?
  10. I provided a thumbnail, but it’s not being used. Does Google create their own thumbnails from my videos?
  11. Any video filesize limitations?
  12. Is there any way to indicate a transcript or closed captioning for a video?
  13. What if I’m using Lightbox or a popup to display a video; can it still be indexed?