Build Video Sitemap with XML Sitemaps Generator

Building video sitemaps requires extra crawler configuration. However, beyond that, making video XML Sitemaps for search engines such as Google is similar to the process for generating normal XML sitemaps

Note: Depending on the website, it may not always be possible to generate video sitemaps.

For video sitemaps, you will first have make sure configuration includes relevant video file extensions and MIME types in output filters. The list of video formats Google accepts include: mpg, mpeg, mp4, mov, mv, asf, avi, ra, ram, rm, flv and more as they are added.

To make things easy, A1 Sitemap Generator contains a preset option that configures all settings to work for most video websites.

Note: Even when using the preset button, you can still benefit from configuring the video sitemap crawler options. Using output filters can help the sitemap generator program pick the best page URLs for videos when there are multiple choices.

Note: When selecting the video sitemap preset, you can afterwards choose and combine it with e.g. the WordPress preset. Combining the two will give you the best results for WordPress video sitemaps.

Note: If you have videos hosted externally (Vimeo, YouTube or similar), you should ensure that you have enabled option: Scan website | Crawler options | Verify external links exist

After website scan has finished, you can create the Google video XML sitemap by choosing the correct sitemap file kind to create:

The video thumbnail image is selected using a generic algorithm in the video sitemap generator. However, you can help A1 Sitemap Generator picking the correct video thumbnail picture by:

• Have at least part similarity between page, video and thumbnail image path and file names.
• Have thumbnail pictures include the word "thumb" or "thumbnail".
• Use Facebook Open Graph Protocol tags and attributes:
  • <meta property="og:image" content="http://example.com/example.png" />.
• Use Facebook Share tags and attributes:
  • <link rel="image_src" content="http://example.com/example.png" />.
  • <link rel="video_src" content="http://example.com/example.mov" />.

While .swt flash movie files are not officially supported if trusting the documentation provided by Google for video sitemaps, you can still include such files as videos. To do that, add the .swt file extension to output filters.

Hosting videos on external video content servers is a popular method to lessen server and website load. As a general guideline, this works fine when creating video sitemaps using our sitemap generator tool. However, many video hosting sites require added programming to work correctly. If you encounter one that is not working with video sitemaps, please contact support.

We aim to have best possible support of all major external content and video hosting networks. However, do remember that some video hosting networks may have or enforce limitations that are out of our control.

We recommend you host videos yourself if possible as this helps search engines associate the videos with your website in search results.

Supported video hosting and video players:

• YouTube
• Vimeo
• Easywebvideo
• Vooplayer
• Blip.tv
• More...