We appreciate your interest

Friday, July 09, 2010 7/09/2010 10:03:00 AM

Our recent posts about Video Sitemaps are of interest to a wide range of webmasters, so we've chosen to post them on the Webmaster Central Blog, rather than the Google Video Blog. As a result we've decided to retire the Google Video blog and post news and information about Video Sitemaps, as well as developments with our video index that powers the video results in Google search and Google Videos (video.google.com), on the Webmaster Central Blog.

Thanks for your readership over the years—we look forward to seeing you in our new home

Posted by Amy MacIsaac, Strategic Partner Manager Google Videos

Calling Video Publishers

Tuesday, January 20, 2009 1/20/2009 09:34:00 AM

Posted by Amit Paunikar, Product Manager

Last week, we announced that we're turning down uploads to Google Video, and refocusing our attention on building a more comprehensive video search engine (in case you're wondering, Google Video search algorithms power YouTube as well as "universal search" from Google.com). We want to make it possible for people searching Google.com or Google Video to find any video, at any time, from any site. But indexing video presents some unique challenges, and if you have videos on your site, you're probably wondering how to make sure your videos are discoverable through Google.

We want video publishers to know that we've made it easier to submit your videos to Google. First, we've simplified the process that allows you to submit Sitemaps to Google. Second, we also extended our Video Sitemaps support to include Media RSS feeds. You do not have to specify the Sitemap file type—we'll determine the type of data you're submitting automatically.

The more information you make available, the easier it is for us to crawl your videos. Here are a few simple things you can include in your Sitemaps to make your videos easier to find:

1) Landing page URL: This is the page where the video is hosted. It's better to have a unique landing page for each video on your site.

2) Video thumbnail URL: Thumbnails provide a strong visual cue to the user. Your video thumbnail should be representative of a snapshot from the video, and should not be misleading in any way.

3) Title & Description: If these are accurate and descriptive, they not only help Google understand your video, but also help users choose the best video search result. Providing information about category, keyword tags and duration is always helpful.

Whether or not you have Video Sitemaps or MRSS feeds, of course, it's important that you make sure that Google can crawl and index your video sites correctly. Make sure you understand how Google crawls, indexes and serves the web. Review the Webmaster Guidelines that will help Google find, index and rank your site. We've also updated the Google Video Help Center to include more information for video publishers. While there's no guarantee that our spiders will find a particular site, following these guidelines should increase the chances of finding videos from your site in the search results.

We hope your videos find the audience they deserve. Take a look at our help content for Video Publishers and Webmasters to get started.

Turning Down Uploads at Google Video

Wednesday, January 14, 2009 1/14/2009 06:30:00 PM

Posted by Michael Cohen, Product Manager

At Google, we like to launch early, launch often, and to iterate our products. Occasionally, this means we have to re-evaluate our efforts and make difficult decisions to be sure we focus on products that make the most sense for our users.

In a few months, we will discontinue support for uploads to Google Video. Don't worry, we're not removing any content hosted on Google Video -- this just means you will no longer be able to upload new content to the service. We've always maintained that Google Video's strength is in the search technology that makes it possible for people to search videos from across the web, regardless of where they may be hosted. And this move will enable us to focus on developing these technologies further to the benefit of searchers worldwide.

There are still great options for people who want to upload content to Google, and we invite them to explore YouTube's dynamic global community or Picasa Web Albums. If you have questions or need more information please read our FAQ page.

We're confident this decision is the right one for our users, and we're looking forward to making Google Video an even better place for you to search and find videos from all over the web.

The Google Video Help Forum has moved

Wednesday, December 17, 2008 12/17/2008 12:29:00 PM

Posted by Sapna Mehta, Online Operations Associate

Our Google Video Help Forum now has a new home! You may have already heard of (or tried out) the new Google Help Forums. Today, our Google Video Help Group will be moving to this new platform.

The help forum is still an area for users to come together to discuss and share their knowledge of Google Video- only now it has a new look. It's integrated with our help center, which makes it even easier to jump into the forum while you're browsing the help center. You can search for content across both the forum and help center articles as well.

There are a lot of new features that make the forum an effective resource for users. You can vote on which responses you think answer a particular question, and even mark a response as a "best answer" to a question that you've asked. The new system will also recognize contributions from helpful posters.



If you haven't checked out our help forum before, now is a great time to come take a look. Post a question if you have one, or take a few minutes to answer one of your fellow Google Video users. You can find us at http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/video?hl=en

Insight for Google Video: A New Way to Track Your Videos

Tuesday, November 04, 2008 11/04/2008 09:07:00 AM

Posted by Sapna Mehta, Online Operations Associate

Have you ever wondered if anyone watches the videos you've uploaded? Or perhaps you've uploaded a video presentation and want to be able to illustrate its success with some numbers? We've added Insight to Google Video so that you can capture some of this information, and use it to optimize your videos.

With the launch of Insight, we're now offering more statistics for your uploaded videos. You can access this feature by clicking on the 'Reports' tab on your Google Video account page. The first tab gives you a convenient summary of the data.


From this summary, you can access specific data pages by clicking on the links for Views, Downloads or Popularity. You can also access these specific pages by clicking on the corresponding tabs at the top. Here, you can change the date range or focus on a specific region of the world to see how your videos are doing.

Rest assured you will still be able to see the statistics that were previously available through Advanced Reports (Views & Downloads). This information is now available right from your Video Status page. You can also click on the 'Stats' link, next to your individual video's status, to view the stats for that particular video.


Hopefully this feature will offer you some new Insight into your uploaded videos and reveal some interesting facts about your viewership.

Playable on Google Video

Tuesday, September 09, 2008 9/09/2008 12:50:00 PM

Posted by Steve Gerding, Software Engineer

One of our favorite aspects of TV view is that it provides an uninterrupted viewing experience. You can browse through multiple results pages and sort, filter or refine your search - all without interrupting the video you're watching. Videos need to be playable on Google Video in order to provide this seamless experience, and while most videos are, some are not. In order to make it easier to identify playable videos, these videos are marked with the playable icon as shown below:

Videos that cannot be played directly in the TV view can still be watched by following the link to the original hosting site. If you want to see only videos that are playable on Google Video in your search results, you can restrict your search to playable videos using the radio buttons under the search box:

We hope this new feature enhances your video search and viewing experience on Google Video. If you are a webmaster and would like your videos to be playable on Google Video, check out our Video Sitemaps Help Center.

Personalized Video Recommendations

Thursday, July 17, 2008 7/17/2008 08:41:00 AM

Posted by Sapna Mehta, Online Operations Associate

Ever wish the sites you visit could present customized options catering to your tastes?

Our Recommended Videos feature does just that. By logging in to your Google account and visiting Google Video, you will see multiple videos that pertain to your search interests. You can find these videos underneath the hot videos section of the homepage. Just like the hot videos, you can click on the arrow buttons in the top right corner to see more recommended videos.

While our search suggestions give you search term suggestions for individual queries you enter, these video picks are based on trends of search queries you've used, as well as other videos that you've watched. It's yet another way to discover interesting video content from across the web - this time, personalized for you.


To take advantage of this feature, you'll be asked to sign in to Web History. It's up to you how much customization you'd like - for example, you can choose which searches are included, and which aren't. For more information about protecting your privacy while enjoying the benefits of personalized search, check out the following video - About Web History: Privacy.

Even More Hot Videos

Wednesday, July 02, 2008 7/02/2008 10:35:00 AM

Posted by Justin Donnelly, Software Engineer

The "Hot videos" section of the Google Video homepage offers up the web's most popular videos, determined by how often they're being watched, shared and blogged about across the Web. If, like me, you think this feature is awesome, you'll love our latest update. Now, instead of only 12 hot videos, there are over a hundred available by clicking on the new pagination buttons on the upper right corner of the "Hot videos" section. Just like our TV view, the video you're currently watching isn't interrupted as you browse through the pages.

Note that these videos are updated throughout the day and are specific to your country. (Wondering what's hot in the Low Countries? Try our Dutch site: http://video.google.nl/.) This expanded view of what's hot can reveal a lot about what's going on in online video. For example, when Weezer released their "Pork and Beans" video recently, nearly every "celebrity" featured in the video appeared in the expanded list within the next couple of days.


Give it a try- You're sure to find something here to entertain you.

Suggestions on Your Search

Friday, June 20, 2008 6/20/2008 12:05:00 PM

Posted by Kun Zhang, Software Engineer

The Google Video team continually strives to make your video search experience more enjoyable. In an effort to do so, we have added a suggestions feature to help you discover more interesting videos. Sometimes the suggestions expand the scope of your search, and sometimes they make your search more specific--it all depends on what you searched for and which suggestion you click on.

To view your search suggestions, click on the "Also try" links on top of the search results to refine or expand your search.


For example, if you are searching for "kittens", you may see suggestions like "cute kittens", "funny kittens", "newborn kittens", "techno kittens", "treadmill kittens" and so on. Clicking on these suggested search terms will lead you to the respective search results page, and another set of suggestions. If you continue following through these suggestion links, your first search may very well turn into hours of exploration.

The suggestions feature is available across all views - TV view, Grid view and List view. We hope that these suggested search terms will add a few different flavors to your search experience.

Closed Captioning Search Options

Thursday, June 05, 2008 6/05/2008 11:50:00 AM

Posted by Ken Harrenstien, Software Engineer

Those of you interested in closed captioning may have noticed a new feature on this front- the ability to search only for closed-captioned videos. Naturally this is very useful for people like myself who can't hear the audio, but of course there are many others who either want the sound off or who can understand the writing better than the speech.

If you go to the "Advanced Video Search" page you'll see a new constraint called "Subtitles: Search only closed captioned videos". Try clicking on that check-box and doing an otherwise normal search; the results will include those videos that are known to have captions. Fun example: to see a list of all captioned videos on Google Video, check that box and restrict the domain to "google.com".

It's still not quite as sophisticated as we want it to be - it currently only knows about videos in Google Video, and doesn't yet allow you to specify a language of interest. Nevertheless it's another small step that we hope will encourage greater awareness and use of captions.

A related feature of interest that you may not have noticed is the ability to jump directly into a video at the point where captions of interest appear. If your search results include caption snippets, there will be a link called "Start playing at search term", which is extremely handy for long videos. In order to see it, you also have to select "List View" (the middle icon in the Results menu bar).

Here's a nice example - search for ["that's a tremendous gift"] . Make sure you've selected List View, and you should see a video featuring Randy Pausch. Clicking on the "Start playing at search term (50:16)" link will take you to a point slightly before the appearance of that caption.