Google Video sitemap

This tag only expects the location of the videoplayer. For my website, this is:

http://www.jeroenwijering.com/embed/player.swf

I presume Google will resolve this to the correct embed tag with the video, flashvars etc...

http://mysite.com/flvplayer.swf?video=myvideo.flv works with Jereon's player and is a valid entry for player_loc field. You can check out my validated and confirmed working video sitemap here: http://www.channel-ai.com/blog/videofeed.xml

thats pretty cool ! - thanks for posting !

I have been trying to create a video sitemap... I have compared my XML output with with the example Google gives and several others I have found on the web... It looks perfect, however when I enter it in google, it wont validate.

Google gives me a warning for any tag that begins with <video: which is odd because it's part of their own specifications.. My XMLNS is correct (copied from them) and anyone who wants to see the XML of one of them you can go here

http://www.mypraize.com/index.php?option=com_mediajive&channelId=10&task=videoSiteMap

I have bashed my brains against a wall here, I can't figure out why Google doesn't like my sitemap, and sitemap validators on the internet also complain about the same tag... I don't get it lol

Try using a validating XML editor, such as: http://xml-copy-editor.sourceforge.net

It will show you things such as missing tag sets, illegal characters ( your XML is full of &anp; which is an illegal character in XML ), and other errors in the XML file.

Try cleaning up one url element, then try submitting it to google.

Thanks for the post, but & isn't an illegal XML character, it's the XML equivalent of an "&" which is why it's in the URLs. You have to encode your URL's correctly.

Also, I did validate the syntax using a FF extension, the validation isn't the problem.

The problem is that Google nor other sitemap validators recognize the elements thats start with <video: which are legit elements in a video sitemap, but not in a regular site map.

figured it out.. figured I would post, because I hate it when people figure our their issues and never post the fix haha.. Terrible!!

I was using the change_freq tag in the sitemap or what it is... It's actually part of a regular sitemap, and is used to show the frequency of change in pages.

Because Video Sitemaps are an extension of sitemaps, I figured it was safe to use this tag... But I guess not, it was causing the validator and google to interpret the file as a sitemap and not a video sitemap...

SO once I took it out everything was fine... I can't believe I have spent this much time trying to figure it out already.. my gosh

Nice to see it's working...

And thanks so much for posting the solution. You're absolutely right — many times someone figures something out, then never posts the solution.

You were right, I had the "&" and the "&" mixed up, ( not enough coffee yet to awaken the brain ).

Anyway, I registered with Google, copied your first url element, replaced your data with mine and submitted it as a Video Sitemap. Google gave me a warning on this line:    <video:video>so I'll remove:<changefreq>daily</changefreq> and try again.

I tried what "eyn" has suggested in his response on Jun 13th 08. And his actually works. Google picked it up (under google videos, put site:www.channel-ai.com and you will see his videos plays at google.) Also if you right click on the player, you will see it says it is JeroenW player 3.16.

However, I tried the same thing (tag shown below) XML is validated, Google picked it up, but when you click on the search results on google video (search stie:www.Sportsfananza.com) and you will see JeroenW player with all these wierd things on it as it is not setup. I using player 4.0. If you copy the text in the tag below in your browser address bar, you will see the video play. Is it a problem with Google? I don't think so!!!

Any help is greatly appreciated

<video:player_loc allow_embed="yes">http://www.SportsFananza.Com/flvplayer.swf?file=http://www.SportsFananza.Com/Pro_Videos/B52AA231-424...</video:player_loc>

I'm having very much the same problem, but i can't solve it the same way.

My sitemap is at http://holamun2.com/videositemap.xml, and Google is complaining that it doesn't recognize the video:* elements declared in the xmlns:video entry. There must be some other formatting error that's triggering this error message, but I cannot for the life of me figure out what's wrong. All my elements seem to match Google's videositemap spec to a tee.

What really irks me is that Google doesn't provide an .xsd file for their videositemap spec. Therefore, i can't use the wide world of XML format-validators to figure out this problem. Why use XML and not support its most basic feature? If there is an XSD for Google's video sitemap specification, Google can't find it. So all of the world's XML validators only seem to be able to tell me that those video:* tags are undefined.

Any advice much appreciated.

You can see a working videositemap at

http://www.bcast.co.nz/videositemap.php (it has a xsl xml style sheet, so go view source for the XML)

It uses flvplayer with plays in google video with all the flashvars etc. The trick is to get the correct things in the correct place .To see is all in action go to :

http://video.google.com and seach for site:bcast.co.nz

Thanks

I have a working video sitemap and my videos are now showing in google.com/video. I noticed that unlike the other player that you can watch videos on, this players does not seem to center itself in the google video window. Is this a google thing or is it something that I have to specify in the sitemap to allow to be centered?

Thanks.

I noticed that some entries said to use

1) player.swf?video=file.flv
2) player.swf?file=file.flv

On my site, only "file=" worked.

m

Is there a way I can have it autostart using this syntax?

Use this as URL: 'player.swf?file=file.flv&autostart=true'.

I am having trouble with Google Video mixing up the titles and thumbnails for my videos. I suppose it must be mal-formed XML in my sitemap. Could the problem be related to double quotes in some of the descriptions, or exclamation points causing the problem?

If you have strange characters in the descriptions, it is always best to set CDATA tags around the description contents. Perhaps that'll fix the issue.

I have heard mixed feedback about the <video:content_loc> and <loc> tags.

Does the flv file have to be on the same domain as the value for <loc> for Google to pick up the videos?

Hi when I put in my site map to http://www.validome.org/xml/validate/

It will not validate. I get the following error:

Error: Can not find declaration of element 'urlset'.
Error Position: xmlns:video="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-video/1.0">

The red underline goes on the last ">"

I put in the following address, which someone posted on this site as already validated, but it received the exact same error:

http://www.channel-ai.com/blog/videofeed.xml

See the results at: http://www.validome.org/xml/validate/?lang=en&url=http://www.channel-ai.com/blog/videofeed.
xml

So what is the problem?

I got my video sitemap validated and my videos indexed by Google within 24 hours, but they weren't autoplaying. I tried Jeroen's suggestion:

Use this as URL: 'player.swf?file=file.flv&autostart=true'.

However now the xml won't validate. Dreamweaver gives me

"Unterminated entity reference, 'autostart'. The same thing happened when I tried to add '&image=image.jpg'.

Any suggestions to fix this? Do I need quotes in there somewhere?

well it's good if any on can tell me, where can i get tool or software, which just generate video-sitemap.xml for me by just entering my domain name in it.

I'm very thankful to you if any one give this kind of tool for free

I realised that I should have used not just & in the code, but the & followed by amp followed by ;

I expect that's what Jeroen wrote in his example above but this forum automatically changed it to a single &

Now then, does anyone know how to correctly form a YouTube URL for the <video:player_loc> tag of a video sitemap? I mean a normal YouTube embedded video, not one hosted in a Longtail player. The example in the Google Video Sitemap documentation does not seem to work:

http://www.youtube.com/swf/l.swf?swf=http%3A//s.ytimg.com/yt/swf/cps-vfl87635.swf&video_id=v65Ud3VqC...

Anyone willing to suggest why this sitemap is not working?

http://emergingterrains.com/burica/video_sitemap.xml

Rick, maybe it needs a unique <loc> tag for each video? Maybe you could try repeating the <loc> tag for each video? Maybe Google expects even a unique page URL for each video?

It validates OK as an xml.

Also your website was really really slow for me. But that might be problems my end. I am in Thailand.

Can anyone lend me a hand?

Google is varifying my video site map and accepts the URLs; however, it will not index any URLs - day after day 0 indexed URLs.

any ideas?

http://mindbodyflo.com/videoSitemap.xml

For PHPMelody here it is the solution for Videos sitemap:

http://www.modmyscript.com/products/VIDEO-Sitemap-Generator.html

I just checked it.

You need a unique LOC for each video. You can also use A1 Sitemap Generator to create video sitemaps, but like Google (afaik) it won't work if your videos is hosted on external sites such as YouTube.

Commenting on Tom and Nick's post: Why then do some google searches provide thumbnails for links to videos on Youtube and others don't?

Tom-
I'm trying to use A1 Sitemap Generator to create my google sitemap, but it is only seeing the few .wmv's I have on my site.
I'm hoping it can be reconfigured to find my JW Player code and the flv's. Do you have any thoughts?

This is the JW Player code from our site:
<script src="swfobject.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

<div id="mediaspace">Video Clip</div>

<script type="text/javascript">// <![CDATA[
var so = new SWFObject('http://www.gototeam.com/wp-content/uploads/video/flvplayer5.swf','mpl','620','350','9');
so.addParam('allowfullscreen','true');
so.addParam('allowscriptaccess','always');
so.addParam('wmode','opaque');
so.addVariable('author','Go To Team');
so.addVariable('description','Orlando Camera Crew shoots documentary short in Africa');
so.addVariable('file','http://www.gototeam.com/wp-content/uploads/video/AfricaShootBlog01.flv');
so.addVariable('image','http://www.gototeam.com/wp-content/uploads/AfricaShootBlog01.jpg');
so.addVariable('controlbar','over');
so.addVariable('stretching','exactfit');
so.addVariable('plugins', 'gapro-1,viral-2');
so.addVariable('gapro.accountid', 'UA-966913-1');
so.write('mediaspace');
// ]]></script>

Nick Hope,try replacing the & with & amp ; instead. There should NOT be a space between & and amp, nor amp and ;, I just had to show it that way otherwise this comment will show a & instead. I hope that makes sense.

Also, you should be able to go to your sitemap, e.g.

http://garethhooper.com/video_sitemap.xml

and view it in your browser. I suspect it will show an error. Do that replacement, and that should do the trick.

If I had a nickel for every hour I spent trying to figure out how to make a video sitemap for youtube, I would be rich. Would someone simply post a working videositemap for a youtube video so I can see how it should look. Please.

I have a Video Sitemap Plugin Page Generator.

See http://www.googlevideositemap.com

Cheers,
Mark

Hi All,
We've a website similar to http://www.blinkbox.com/

How would you generate the video sitemap for such sites?

The video files (.flv etc) are not directly accessible via URL.

I can figure out all the parameters for video sitemap but I can't find out the video location
<video:player_loc>

What would be the value for <video:player_loc> ?

Any idea?

Such sites don't show the actual video files so my guess would be that we have to specify the embedded video url something like following which Google shows on
http://www.google.com/support/webmasters/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=80472 and which ofcourse doesn't work when you type it in browser address.

http://www.youtube.com/swf/l.swf?swf=http%3A//s.ytimg.com/yt/swf/cps-vfl87635.swf&video_id=v65Ud3VqC...

My guess is that if we type such url in browser url it should play the video and if they do then we have the correct value for <video:player_loc>

the other example on Google Video sitemap page works though
http://www.dailymotion.com/swf/x1o2g

Would it be possible to extract the <video:player_loc> value from the embed code?

yes, you can create Google Video Sitemap with Sitemap Writer Pro, cause it creates 6 types of sitemaps. Here's the website:
http://sitemapwriter.com/

I am unable to generate <video:player_loc> tag with A1 Sitemap Generator after scanning my page with the following embed code:

<div id="rav-promo">Loading the player...</div>
<script type="text/javascript">
jwplayer("rav-promo").setup
({
flashplayer: "http://www.mysite.com/jwplayer/player.swf",
file: "http://www.mysite.com/videos/myvideo.flv",
image: "http://www.mysite.com/images/myimage.jpg",
title: "my title",
description: "my description",
height: 260,
width: 435
});
</script>