Data transmission methods

If you use the built-in player of a large video hosting site such as YouTube to display your videos, no additional markup is required to transfer data to Yandex. The robot will index your site videos and add them to the video search results.

Otherwise, you can use the following methods to transmit video information:

XML markup has an advantage over Open Graph micro markup and Schema.org, because XML supports more fields and doesn't require direct crawling of the site pages. This makes indexing faster, and search algorithms get more data about the video and take them into account when forming search results.

To transmit data using XML markup:

  1. Create an updated XML file. The following requirements apply to the feed:

    • The XML file must be sent in UTF-8 encoding.

    • All relevant video data must be sent in the feed.

    • HTML tags aren't allowed in the data unless they're sent as CDATA or their use is specifically stipulated.

    • Information about modified videos in the feed must be updated, rather than deleted and added again.

    • Each video must be described in a separate feed.

  2. Make sure that the XML feeds that you've created are correctly recognized by the robot. You can do this using the XML feed validator (select the Video document validation scheme).

  3. Inform the robot about the marked-up videos.

    After you create XML feeds, put their links in the sitemap file or use semantic markup (Schema.org or Open Graph).

    Place the feed address via micro markup

    In the Open Graph markup, add a link to the OGP dictionary and an XML video description to the HTML code of each video page:

    <html prefix="ya: https://yandex.ru/support/video/partners/markup.html">
    <meta property="ya:ovs:feed_url" content="https://example.com/user111/view24/view24.xml">

    In the Schema.org markup, the XML feed address must be specified in an additional feedUrl field of the VideoObject scheme:

    <meta itemprop="feedUrl" content="https://example.com/user111/view24/view24.xml">

    It's useful to add XML feed links to the semantic markup because robots can re-crawl them more often and faster than if feed links are obtained from a sitemap file.

    Place the feed address in the sitemap file

    Create a separate XML feed for each video and enter the feed addresses in the sitemap file in the feed field. Make a separate entry for every link to a feed with a video.

    1. Add a link to the video search scheme in the header of your sitemap.

      xmlns:ovs="https://webmaster.yandex.ru/schemas/video"
    2. For each video page, add an ovs:video element and specify the address of the XML description in it.

      <url>
        <loc>https://example.com/111/</loc>
        <lastmod>2013-04-01T13:10:32+00:00</lastmod>
        <ovs:video> 
        <ovs:feed>https://example.com/user111/view24/view24.xml</ovs:feed>
        </ovs:video>
      </url>

    As a result, the sitemap file should contain lots of links to XML feeds with videos. Add the sitemap link to robots.txt or via Yandex.Webmaster (to learn more, see Help).

    If you place links to XML feeds in the sitemap file, it allows the Yandex robot to index all videos from your hosting site straight away. This is especially useful if your site has a lot of video content (for example, several thousand videos).

    The methods can be combined: you can provide links to XML feeds using micro markup and in the sitemap file at the same time. If you combine these methods, it speeds up video indexation and makes data exchange more resistant to problems with site availability.

  4. Check that the videos appeared in the search.

    The specified video links appear in the search automatically when the sitemap file or site pages with semantic markup are indexed. If after a while your videos don't appear in the search, contact us.

Restrictions on video content

We reserve the right to not index some videos. These include:

  • Videos on sites without content moderation.

  • Offensive and/or pornographic videos.

  • Videos that violate the current legislation of the Russian Federation.

  • Videos posted on sites that don't meet the conditions of the License to use Yandex search engine.

There's no maximum or minimum limit on the number of videos. We can process any number of your videos and any video size, as well as take into account the growth dynamics of your video database.