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Monday, August 16, 2010
If you want to add video information to a Sitemap or mRSS feed you must specify the location of
the video. This means you must include one of two tags, either the
video:player_loc or video:content_loc. In the case of an mRSS feed,
these equivalent tags are media:player or media:content, respectively.
We need this information to verify that there is actually a live video on your landing page and
to extract metadata and signals from the video bytes for ranking. If one of these tags is not
included we will not be able to verify the video and your Sitemap/mRSS feed will not be crawled.
To reduce confusion, here is some more detail about these elements.
Video Locations Defined
Player Location/URL: the player (for example, .swf) URL with corresponding arguments that
load and play the actual video.
Content Location/URL: the actual raw video bytes (for example, .flv, .avi) containing the
video content.
The Requirements
One of either the player video:player_loc or content video:content_loc
location is required. However, we strongly suggest you provide both, as they each serve distinct
purposes: player location is primarily used to help verify that a video exists on the page, and
content location helps us extract more signals and metadata to accurately rank your videos.
URL extensions at a glance
Sitemap:
mRSS:
Contents:
<loc>
<link />
The playpage URL
<video:player_loc>
<media:player>(url attribute)
The SWF URL
<video:content_loc>
<media:content> (url attribute)
The FLV or other raw video URL
Note, that all URLs should be unique (every URL in your entire Video Sitemap and mRSS feed should
be unique).
If you would like to better ensure that only Googlebot accesses your content, you can perform a
reverse DNS lookup.
For more information on Google Videos please visit our
Help Center,
and to post questions and search for answers check out our
Help Forum.
Posted by Nelson Lee, Product Manager, Video Search
[[["Easy to understand","easyToUnderstand","thumb-up"],["Solved my problem","solvedMyProblem","thumb-up"],["Other","otherUp","thumb-up"]],[["Missing the information I need","missingTheInformationINeed","thumb-down"],["Too complicated / too many steps","tooComplicatedTooManySteps","thumb-down"],["Out of date","outOfDate","thumb-down"],["Samples / code issue","samplesCodeIssue","thumb-down"],["Other","otherDown","thumb-down"]],[],[[["Google requires either the `video:player_loc` or `video:content_loc` tag in your Sitemap or mRSS feed to verify and rank videos."],["Providing both `video:player_loc` and `video:content_loc` is recommended for better video indexing and ranking by Google."],["All URLs in your Video Sitemap and mRSS feed, including the playpage URL, SWF URL, and raw video URL, should be unique."],["Reverse DNS lookup can be used to restrict access to your content to only Googlebot."],["This blog post might be outdated; refer to the up-to-date [video sitemaps documentation](/search/docs/crawling-indexing/sitemaps/video-sitemaps) for the latest information."]]],["To add video information to a Sitemap or mRSS feed, you must include either `video:player_loc` (or `media:player` in mRSS) or `video:content_loc` (or `media:content`). These tags specify the player URL or the raw video file URL. Providing both is recommended: the player location helps verify the video's existence, while the content location helps with ranking. All URLs within the feed should be unique. Verify only google bot accesses the content using reverse DNS lookup.\n"]]
