Why no video thumbnail?

[DownPour]

We started using Wistia for our video hosting, and our SERP results for the video pages were showing thumbnails in the results, but somewhere along the line we just stopped getting the thumbnails to show, and I'm not sure why.

Anyone have any ideas?

Search: Edward Asner Interview by Malcolm Hillgartner

We are both Blackstoneaudio.com and Downpour.com, and yes, I know there are issues with posting the content on both sites, more concerned with why the thumbnails disappeared from both sites.

[DownPour]

Thanks Phil,

That was my guess, I just wanted confirmation, and between you and the folks at Wistia sounds like that's the most plausible explanation.

Thanks everyone for taking the time to help out with this!

[PhilNottingham]

I'm 90% positive it's because you've hidden the video code itself behind a JavaScript trigger, so Googlebot struggles to see it.

While you used to be able to get videos indexed just with a video sitemap, Google have got slightly better at working out whether that sitemap actually corresponds to content in the HTML, but if you've used JS to execute the embedded video, you're likely to find that it won't get indexed.

So, I'd recommend looking at fixing that implementation and potentially see if you can do it just with CSS, or shift the page around so the embed loads up when the page does, not after a secondary trigger.

[DownPour]

So, I talked to Wistia and they said there may be an issue with the video not initializing on the page since it is behind a button/tab and not on the page to start with.  I was kind of expecting someone to say something about that, but no one did.  Is this a problem in anyone's view?  The code for the video IS in the page before the button is clicked.

[DownPour]

Hmm...yeah, it doesn't show up, but it does detect the thumbnail url and I can verify that it works.

[anthonydnelson]

Google selectively shows rich snippets.

Plug your URL into the Google Structured Data Testing Tool. http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets

If it works, stop worrying about your snippet and focus on other areas of your site you can improve.

[DownPour]

Hmm... interesting, since early January huh? I know someone on our side came around and added the button interface that effectively "hides" the video initially and you have to click the button to actually show the video on the page, so I was wondering if that had anything to do with it (the video is in the code still).  This is a possibility I hadn't considered.

I'd still like to hear if anyone has any other thoughts, but thanks for the link to the article, good information to have.

[JonathanRolande]

I am having issues trying to remove the video snippet, I think it could all be related as I just read this http://searchengineland.com/google-authorship-bug-affects-very-few-sites-actively-working-on-a-fix-167167

Also, it's not guaranteed to show anyway. But if it was showing before I'm not sure why it would just disappear.

I reckon it's something to do with Google in my opinion.