Successful Google SERP Video Thumbnail Experiment

You wrote a Google Video Sitemap entry for your homepage. Very clever.

Hi Marc - could you provide some insight on how you achieved this?

Thanks!

JM

You're kidding right, why would you post about something like that and then not tell others how to do it?? LAME

Well, unfortunately, I cant duplicate the results again so I dont want to provide advice that wont work... ;-( I will say that it is crucial to have a google video sitemap for this.

man, i have done the same, i know how to get these Thumbnails in Universal Search, BUT i need to know how to delete them again oder make them disappear again... please help me...

I have been trying to figure this out for hours, well many days. I use a CSS editor. If you know how to do this would you please share. I am in Alaska. We need to reach out with all we got!!!

Squirrel

Do you host your own videos?

im curious to know moer about this also. Thumbnails are showing in SERP for my site, but I have NO idea where the thumbnail that is being used is coming from!

Looks like it is coming from the img_src in your header meta tags. What
platform is your site on BTW, wordpress?

Hey Mark thanks for the reply, ya its on WP

I was guessing it was the image_src meta tag also, however, the meta tag is pointing to a small thumbnail image (35x28) and the thumbnail in the SERPs is 80x60 but it's not a scaled version of the 35x28 or else the quality would be much worse. It may be the case that several months ago I had a larger version of the image in the image_src tag, I can't remember at all, and perhaps google still has a cache of this image, that is the best explanation I can think of at the moment. Anyway, thanks for providing your opinion that the image does in fact come from the image_src tag because thumbnails for each post will be introduced in the upcoming redesign, and they will be included in this tag, so ultimately I just want to make sure that they will show up in the SERPs appropriately. I'm also interested to find out what is the best image size for thumbnails, based on the 80x60 images I'm guessing I want to maintain this ratio.

Thanks the help, any additional info is greatly appreciated. Cheers!

What plugin are you using to generate that thumbnail source meta tag,
or is it just a custom field you are using? I couldn't find one, but
you aren't using a video sitemap are you? I saw the regular one

not using anything to generate the thumbnail tag at the moment, it's just hardcoded. no i'm not using video sitemap, just started hearing about that (probably on this site) and it's on my todo list to learn more about :)

Hey Mark,
Any tips for generating a video sitemap? I can't find anything useful. There are plugins like FLV embed that will do it, but most of my videos are just embedded from youtube or elsewhere so this doesn't help. I'm looking for software to do the trick but not having any luck.

Cheers!
David

Unfortunately, videos from YouTube don't do well in video sitemaps, or at
least, Ive had no success in getting those indexed for my own URL. If you
are hosting your own videos or have an MRSS feed, it tends to work quite
well.