External video content in iframe
-
Hi,
On our site we have a lot of video content. The player is hosted by a third party so we are using an iframe to include the content on our site.
The problem is that the content it self (on the third party domain) is shown in the google result.
My question is: Can we ask the third party to disallow the content from indexing in their robots.txt or will that also affect our own use of the video content? For example we use video-sitemaps to include the videos in Google video search (the sitemap links to the videos on our own domain, but we are still using iframes on the pages to collect the content from the third party domain that will then be blocked by robots.txt).
I hope you understand what I mean... Any suggestions?
Thanks a lot!
-
Hey,
Yes - this is a classic problem. It should be relatively easy to fix in the hosting platform settings.
What third party provider are you using?
-
Have you thought about actually hosting the video yourself? I have a few clients have started doing this now for a variety of reasons (control being one of them).
I'm not too sure I would be asking them to Robots the video out, but it does sound like you could do with more control over this and adding in some branding.
Could the video be re-worked so it has an introduction / splash screen? Could you add it to YouTube and create a channel there along with links back?
It sounds to me like you just need to take a look at what other possibilities exist in terms of directing people over to your site.
Andy
-
Ah, and regarding your last note: They will definitly fix the robots.txt if we ask them, I'm just not sure if it's a good idea or if it will mess up on our end as well
-
Hi Andy,
Yes, the video content is owned by us and there are two reasons why I want to remove the serp listing for the third party:
1. Since their listing is for their domain (even though it's a specific subdomain dedicated for us), it's not obvious for the user that the video belongs to us (and we are a very well known brand here in Sweden)
2. When the user clicks in the video listing for the third party, they land directly in the video player. There are no menues, logotypes or anything that actually tells the user that this is our content. And there is no possability for the user to click on a link to get to our website and make a purchase.And yes, sometimes the serp shows our domain and sometimes the third party domain and I don't actually know how to control this.
-
Just so I understand, are you wanting to ask for the third party to block the video so only your site appears when the video shows up in the search results?
- Does the video currently show up in the SERPs from your site?
- Is the video content in question owned by you?
At the end of the day, you can ask anyone anything you wish - you just don't know what the answers will be.
Andy
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Z-indexed content
I have some content on a page that I am not using any type of css hiding techniques, but I am using an image with a higher z-index in order to prevent the text from being seen until a user clicks a link to have the content scroll down. Are there any negative repercussions for doing this in regards to SEO?
Technical SEO | | cokergroup0 -
Duplicate content on user queries
Our website supports a unique business industry where our users will come to us to look for something very specific (a very specific product name) to find out where they can get it. The problem that we're facing is that the products are constantly changing due to the industry. So, for example, one month, one product might be found on our website, and the next, it might be removed completely... and then might come back again a couple months later. All things that are completely out of our control - and we have no way of receiving any sort of warning when these things might happen. Because of this, we're seeing a lot of duplicate content issues arise... For Example... Product A is not active today... so www.mysite.com/search/productA will return no results... Product B is also not active today... so www.mysite.com/search/productB will also return no results. As per Moz Analytics, these are showing up as duplicate content because both pages indicate "No results were found for {your searched term}." Unfortunately, it's a bit difficult to return a 204 in these situations (which I don't know if a 204 would help anyway) or a 404, because, for a faster user experience, we simultaneously render different sections of the page... so in the very beginning of the page load - we start rendering the faster content (template type of content) that says "returning 200 code, we got the query successfully & we're loading the page".. the unique content results finish loading last since they take the longest. I'm still very new to the SEO world, so would greatly appreciate any ideas or suggestions that might help with this... I'm stuck. 😛 Thanks in advance!
Technical SEO | | SFMoz0 -
Quickview popup duplicate content
Hi We have an eccomerce site. We just added to the product list view a quickview tab - when you roll mouse over it a popup window with the product image and short description shows up - is this a problem of duplicate content( its the same content that's on the product pages except there we also have a long detailed description) - t is done with javascript. Thanks!
Technical SEO | | henya0 -
Wordpress tags and duplicate content?
I've seen a few other Q&A posts on this but I haven't found a complete answer. I read somewhere a while ago that you can use as many tags as you would like. I found that I rank for each tag I used. For example, I could rank for best night clubs in san antonio, good best night clubs in san antonio, great best night clubs in san antonio, top best night clubs in san antonio, etc. However, I now see that I'm creating a ton of duplicate content. Is there any way to set a canonical tag on the tag pages to link back to the original post so that I still keep my rankings? Would future tags be ignored if I did this?
Technical SEO | | howlusa0 -
Should I no follow all external links?
I have worked with a few different SEO firms lately and a lot of them have recommended on the sites I was working on to "no-follow" all external links on the site. On one hand this traps all the link equity/Pagerank. On the other I would think this practice is frowned upon by Google. What are some opinions on this?
Technical SEO | | MarloSchneider0 -
Duplicate Content Vs No Content
Hello! A question that has been throw around a lot at our company has been "Is duplicate content better than no content?". We operate a range of online flash game sites, most of which pull their games from a feed, which includes the game description. We have unique content written on the home page of the website, but aside from that, the game descriptions are the only text content on the website. We have been hit by both Panda and Penguin, and are in the process of trying to recover from both. In this effort we are trying to decide whether to remove or keep the game descriptions. I figured the best way to settle the issue would be to ask here. I understand the best solution would be to replace the descriptions with unique content, however, that is a massive task when you've got thousands of games. So if you have to choose between duplicate or no content, which is better for SEO? Thanks!
Technical SEO | | Ryan_Phillips0 -
Openx IFrame and tracking in Analytics
Hi, We're running our own adserver and we use OPENX. The problem is with the iframe invocation type that we have been using to show ads on pages. My question is: How can we track the ad clicks that are being showed in the iframe? I know the method in Analytics to count outgoing links as pageviews or events but I am not sure how to do this for clicks for OPENX Iframes as they don't even include Google Analytics tracking code inside the iframe. any ideas appreciated
Technical SEO | | Gamer070 -
Is this dangerous (a content question)
Hi I am building a new shop with unique products but I also want to offer tips and articles on the same topic as the products (fishing). I think if was to add the articles and advice one piece at a time it would look very empty and give little reason to come back very often. The plan, therefore, is to launch the site pulling articles from a number of article websites - with the site's permission. Obviously this would be 100% duplicate content but it would make the user experience much better and offer added value to my site as people are likely to keep returning even when not in the mood to purchase anything; it also offers the potential for people to email links to friends etc. note: over time we will be adding more unique content and slowly turning off the pulled articled. Anyway, from an seo point of view I know the duplicate content would harm the site but if I was to tell google not to index the directory and block it from even crawling the directory would it still know there is duplicate content on the site and apply the penalty to the non duplicate pages? I'm guessing no but always worth a second opinion. Thanks Carl
Technical SEO | | Grumpy_Carl0