My wistia videos are not being index by Google. Does anyone know what can be happening?
-
I have the wistia site map on my robots.txt file and I also manually submit the site map to google.
It shows that my videos were submitted successfully but they are not being indexed. Thanks
-
Hi,
The video being too far down the page might be an issue. I've seen this cause problems before, and in your case I think it could be a problem. More broadly though, I don't think you should have those videos on the category pages, because the video itself is just image slideshow and actually does more to hamper the using experience rather than help it. As rich snippets aren't common any more, I don't think you're going to get much value from having these videos on those pages.
Having the sitemap hosted at Wistia isn't a problem. You can point to a sitemap hosted on any site.
Other likely problems are duplicate content. You seem to have significant duplicate content issues as I'm seeing about 3 variations of that page indexed.
Hope that's useful,
Phil.
-
Hi Phil,
I've always appreciated reading your comments to others but I wanted to reach out to you with a question.
We are having a similar issue with our Wistia video's not being indexed (it's been several months). The funny thing is that our videos, which are hosted by Wistia, used to be indexed before we launched our responsive design site upgrade. The older version had the video near the top of the page, but it was under a "tab". The new version, the video is down a lot farther (to make room for our product options), but it is no longer in a tab. http://www.hairbowcenter.com/ribbon/grosgrain-ribbon/hbc-solid-grosgrain-ribbon/browse-by-width-hbc-grosgrain/3-grosgrain-ribbon-solid-hbc-75mm.html
We noticed that the video's themselves do show up when you view the page as google. If you look at the cached page, the video is there along with the closed captioning.
We have had several opinions as to what could cause the issue:
1) Video is too far down on the page. We are not quite sure how to fix this as it would further push down our products and this is primarily a e-commerce page
2) Video sitemap is hosted at Wistia: I"m not sure if this would matter as it seems to work for everyone else and it used to work for us. We have a roboxt.txt file pointing to Wistia.
If you have any thoughts on what the issue might be, I'd love to hear them.Thanks
-
You're most welcome!
-
Another suggestion...
Being a huge fan of Wistia, there directions do clearly say, one video per page. So this is what we do. We have a video on one page with ONLY the video transcript. We give google the url to this page only. For the videos where our shoppers view, like our product pages, etc, we use the thumbnail with popup, this way it keeps the consumer on the page were they can purchase.
Also dont be afraid to email the wistia support, they are fantastic. Good luck!
Cathy
-
Thank you very much! Your help was much appreciated!!
Let the "waiting period" begin
Thanks
Michelle
-
Videos using a lightbox will sometimes get indexed - it really depends on whether or not Google manage to execute the JS - and this really depends on the whole site architecture. It might be an issue for you, it might not.
My gut is that the main issue at this stage is just time, so I'd definitely give it a few more weeks before taking any further action.
From personal experience, I would be extremely surprised if the position of the video has anything to do with it - "the fold" is a much less concretely defined concept than it once was and your videos are perfectly prominent on the page.
-
Hello Phil,
Very helpful answer! Thank you.
We have some pages where we only have one video per page, just like you mentioned. For example: http://goo.gl/PX6X6E
We are trying different things in different pages to see if googlebot likes a specific scenario.
We saw some sites where the video was indexed and it was showing on google search and they were using the lightbox, that's why we decided to try that as well. We were wondering if the position of the video on the page had anything to do with the index success. Since a lot of our videos are being embed after the fold.
I guess, if googlebot likes the "one video per page" those pages with only one video should be indexed. We'll see! I'll wait a little longer.
Thank you!
Michelle
-
Hi Michelle,
So - firstly, a week is not enough time to determine whether there is a problem with indexation. Videos can take weeks and even months to get indexed, even with all the appropriate mark-up applied, and so I'd recommended at least holding fire for a few more weeks before being too concerned.
However... there are quite a few things on the page in question which could confuse Googlebot and therefore pose problems for you. Firstly, you've embedded the same video twice on the page - once in a lightbox behind a JavaScript Trigger, and then once just embedded into the page. It's hard to know whether Google will be able to execute that JavaScript successfully, but it's highly possible this double embed could confuse Googlebot (and confuse users!). Is there any particular reason why you've embedded the video twice? Secondly, you've also embedded a load of YouTube videos at the bottom of the page. YouTube videos get indexed on the pages they're embedded on instantly, but don't often rank with rich snippets in the blended organic results. This is also a fairly confusing signal to Googlebot, where the "one video per page" model still seems to be the most effective way of getting everything indexed correctly.
I hope that's useful!
Phil
-
hello Erica,
Thank you for your answer.
I already watched all the videos I could find on the subject including videos from Wistia, Distilled and MOZ blog and It seems like I did everything the way I am supposed to.
This is one of my product pages that have the wistia video embed.
I have the wistia site map on my robots.txt file and I also manually submit one to google webmaster tools.
It's been a week since I submitted my video site map, there are no errors, but only the URL's were indexed, none of the videos.
Our goal is to display the video thumbnail on the search results next to our product pages.
thank you!
Michelle
-
Hello Phil,
Thank you for your time. I watched all your videos on this subject and I can't find what is causing the issue.
This is one of my product pages that have the wistia video embed.
I have the wistia site map on my robots.txt file and I also manually submit one to google webmaster tools.
It's been a week since I submitted my video site map, there are no errors, but only the URL's were indexed, none of the videos.
Our goal is to display the video thumbnail on the search results next to our product pages.
thank you!
Michelle
-
Are you able to share the site in question?
I'll happily take a look into it for you.
-
Without looking at your exact maps, it's hard to say. I'd suggest reading through and watching Wistia's awesome documentation about Video SEO and seeing if anything pops out as not happening on your end.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Does google index html5 tracks (captions) for videos?
If we add the <track> tag next to a html5 video, with a Web Video Text Tracks Format (WebVTT) file for video subtitles / captions will google visit that and index it?
Image & Video Optimization | | ismgadmin0 -
Yodel - Anyone have insights into their process?
Does anyone have experience cleaning up Yodel claimed listings or issues created by past Yodel campaigns? Do you know if they're in the habit of creating Google+ Local listings for their clients? I definitely appreciate anyone's response, but specific insight into Yodel's process would be extremely useful. Long story short, busy client with little time is unsure if work Yodel did in the past resulted in these duplicate listings, or if staff created them, and where we might get access to them. Attempting to track down access and sources before I dive in with reports. Cheers!
Image & Video Optimization | | BedeFahey0 -
Video and SEO
I am planning on placing some short how to videos on my site. My question is what is the best way to implement video. Youtube Vimeo Self Hosted Video How do I ensure that the video can be viewed by all devices if it is self hosted?
Image & Video Optimization | | bronxpad0 -
Video SEO - Why are my videos not being indexed?
Hello All, I work on a site that has a lot of videos. The trouble is none of them are ranking. Here is an example of a page with a video on. If you click the play button you will see But none of these videos are being indexed, as you can see here. Is it because these videos are just mp4 files, rather than being embedded players (like SEOmoz use for instance)? Would embedding videos through Viddler / Wistia / Youtube etc help? Or is there some other issue at work here? Any help on this would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Rich
Image & Video Optimization | | JBGlobalSEO0 -
Google Places: "We currently do not support the location"
Does anybody know what is going on with this message? Instead of our Google Places page, we get the above message. 😞 To be mentioned that Google representatives called our business to verify this listing 2 times this week... Anybody got the same problem? Thanks!
Image & Video Optimization | | echo10 -
Appering in both Google Places and regular SERP at the same time
Hi all! My question is: if a search query gives 2 regular results, then the Google Places results, then 8 more results on the first page, is it possible for a website to appear in both in the regular listing, and in the Google Places listing at the same time? In other words: if I do everything well, can my website be the first result, and also be one of the results in the Places listing as well? Or does a website only either apper in the regular listing or in the Places listing? Thanks for the answers!
Image & Video Optimization | | Diginin1 -
Issues with google places.
Hey there! A few weeks ago I made some changes to my client's "google places page". I am facing two issues there which I could not resolve on my own, they are: After I made changes and updated the page I could not see any activity on the analytics section whereas before I updated the page there was some metrics visible. The client had already claimed his places page before he came to me and entered some information. He just stuffed some keywords in the description section. I made necessary changes to the description based on the best practices for places page and according to Google's guideline for creating a great listing.The problem is the category did not update on the places page that show up in SERPs(it ranks top for four major keywords with geo indicators). However, the changes I made does appear when on the lower left side when I login into my places page. I don't see any link that will let me edit "description". Am I confusing some other section with category? I have tried to be as lucid as possible. I will appreciate any help. Thanks for your time. epMp kPWpf
Image & Video Optimization | | virtualhandshake0 -
VIDEO SUBMISSION
Hi - If I remember rightly someone from the SeoMoz team has mentioned a video submission site called Wisteria? Is this right? If so what is the URL and what are the benfits over TubeMogul from an SEO perspective / ease of use etc ? Thanks
Image & Video Optimization | | PH2920