Video Sitemap Generator

What a video sitemap is

It is an XML file that tells Google about your videos: where they sit, what they show, how long they run. Without it, a crawler sees a page with a player on it, and guesses. With it, it knows.

It does not replace your ordinary sitemap, it adds to it. Both can even fit in the same file, since a video is just a URL with extra tags around it.

The tag nobody outputs

Here is the point that justifies this tool. When video:family_friendly is missing, Google treats the video as suitable for everyone and serves it with SafeSearch on. That is written in its documentation, and it is the default behavior.

Put another way, an adult catalog published with an ordinary generator tells Google the opposite of what it is. That is not an advantage: rankings get corrected sooner or later, and markup the content contradicts does not inspire trust. Declaring no is the accurate position, and it is the one this tool takes by default.

The five required elements

Google asks for five, and a file missing one of them is ignored for the video concerned.

1. The URL of the page that hosts the player, in the ordinary loc tag.
2. A thumbnail, in video:thumbnail_loc.
3. The title, in video:title.
4. A description, in video:description, 2,048 characters at most.
5. The video file itself in video:content_loc, or the player page in video:player_loc. Either one is enough.

The tool picks between those last two from what you give it: a URL that ends in a video extension becomes content_loc, everything else becomes player_loc.

What Google dropped

Four tags are no longer read: video:category, video:gallery_loc, video:price and video:tvshow. Nor are the autoplay and allow_embed attributes on video:player_loc.

Outputting them is not a mistake, they are simply ignored. But a file that carries them gives away a generator that has not been updated in years, and it is worth checking what yours produces.

The limits of the format

A sitemap file holds at most 50,000 URLs and weighs at most 50 MB once uncompressed. Past that, you have to split it and declare the pieces in a sitemap index. The tool warns you when you get close to the limit.

Where to put it

Save the file at the root of your site, under a plain name like sitemap-video.xml, then add one line to your robots.txt: Sitemap: https://your-site.com/sitemap-video.xml. You can also submit it in Search Console, which gives you the detail of any read errors on top of that.

Common questions

Do you need a separate video sitemap?

No, it is a convenience. You can add the video tags to your existing sitemap. A separate file is simply easier to regenerate when the catalog moves.

How often should you rebuild it?

Every time the catalog changes in any real way. A file that announces videos that are gone wastes the crawler's time, and it ends up coming back less often.

Is duration really worth it?

It is optional, but it is what lets Google show the running time next to the result. It has to fall between 1 and 28,800 seconds, which is eight hours.

What if my video sits with a third-party host?

Give the URL of the page on your site where the player is embedded in the first column, and the player URL in the fifth. The sitemap describes your pages, not somebody else's files.

Does my catalog get sent anywhere?

No. The file is assembled by your browser. You can cut your connection before you paste your list, the tool works all the same.