If you’re optimizing videos on your website so they can be found in Google universal search results, you’re probably wasting your time. Even if you’ve created a video sitemap “to make sure that Google knows about all your rich video content,” you’re probably just spinning your wheels.
Why?
As Google itself says, “When you submit a Sitemap to Google that includes video information in a supported format, we will make the included video URLs searchable on Google Video.”
Although submitting a Sitemap is easy, getting your video content indexed by Google doesn’t get it a high ranking in Google search results. To get high rankings, your videos also need to be relevant, get more views (or more viewing time), and obtain good ratings…
First, videos weren’t being found in Google Universal Search results as frequently at the end of 2012 as they were at the beginning of 2012. So, if you are counting on your videos – wherever they are hosted – to be found in Google search results, you’re sailing against the wind.
Second, 8 out of the 10 videos that are found in Google search results are hosted YouTube. Oh, and these YouTube videos rank about two positions higher than videos hosted on any other site.
