How to delete video rich snippets?
-
Hi mozzaholics,
At first I was very happy to have video snippets appear in Google (200 pages), but now after 6 months I see a drop of almost -30% in traffic, whilst the average rank stayed the same, compared to the star snippets I have for other pages.
So I want to remove the video snippets and have the old rich snippets back. I tried removing the videositemap and google's the structured data tool doesn't show video snippets.
Does anybody know what else I can do to remove the video snippets? Is there anybody who succeeded deleting them? Please share your wisdom.
Ivo
-
Are you looking to remove every single video snippet? Or just the snippets from some pages? It seems fairly drastic to remove every one, so I'd suggest you delve a bit deeper and work out exactly which pages you don't want the snippet on any more. That way, you can submit a sitemap with some URLs, but not all.
Additionally, note that it's much easier to get the thumbnail changed than the snippet removed entirely, could you try split testing thumbnails to see if it's just suboptimal pictures that are causing you problems here, rather than the snippets as a whole?
If you can't take the videos down, I honestly think you'll struggle to get the snippets removed. Google are not on your side here unfortunately.
-
Hi Phil,
Thanks for your extensive answer. I saw your response before, when looking in to this problem, here on moz (loved your video btw) and elsewhere. It's too bad there isn't a guideline by Google we can follow.
I did remove the videositemap, but since these are the only video's on the site. I did not resubmit it. Do you recommend resubmitting an empty one (bit weird though)?
I can't take them off the website since it is high season in my industry and the video's do have added value to the visitor. I guess it's just not something he or she is expecting when looking (googling) for our product.
-
Hi Ivo,
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I think you're really going to struggle to get those snippets removed, especially since you've used YouTube embeds.
It seems that right now, once a video is indexed, it's very hard to get that snippet removed. You can get a difference video snippet indexed for the page, but Google don't seem to refresh the index regularly or re-crawl pages to determine whether the video attribution is still relevant that often either.
In instances where I have managed to get snippets removed, it's often taken months and there doesn't seem to be a huge level of consistency I can point to.
That said, here are my recommendations:
- Submit a new video sitemap with the appropriate pages taken out (don't just remove the old one)
- Take the videos off the page (and you probably want them off YouTube as well in your case).
- Ensure you don't have FB open graph tags or schema tags related to the video on the page.
- Once you've done all this, resubmit the page to GWMT and then hope for the best!
-
No the traffic went to our own website, but the CTR dropped after the video snippets appeared. So we want to go back to star rich snippets.
-
Was the issue that it was sending the traffic to youtube instead of your site? If that's the case have you considered a backlink friendly hosted video solution(Wistia is the onlu one I know).
I'm really curious about this particular scenario.
-
Thanks for answering. It's HTML
with a ref to Youtube. There is no rich snippet info surrounding it. The video sitemap did the trick. So removing the video sitemap seems the first step.
-
What have you used to put them in place in the first place? HTML, PHP, WordPress?
If I'm understand the question correctly if should just be a case of removing the rich snippets that are around your video information?
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
-
Deleting Tags without Penalty?
Hello - We have a site with over 1,000 tags. We added too many and would like a fresh start as they are creating a lot of duplicate pages on the site. What is the best way to go about deleting all of these tags without being penalized by Google? Is there a way to tell Google direclty to stop crawling them? We would prefer to not have that many pages just sit as 404 errors on the site. Thank you.
Technical SEO | | FamiliesLoveTravel0 -
URL Inspector, Rich Results Tool, GSC unable to detect Logo inside Embedded schema
I work on a news site and we updated our Schema set up last week. Since then, valid Logo items are dropping like flies in Search Console. Both URL inspector & Rich Results test cannot seem to be able to detect Logo on articles. Is this a bug or can Googlebot really not see schema nested within other schema?Previously, we had both Organization and Article schema, separately, on all article pages (with Organization repeated inside publisher attribute). We removed the separate Organization, and now just have Article with Organization inside the publisher attribute. Code is valid in Structured Data testing tool but URL inspection etc. cannot detect it. Example: https://bit.ly/2TY9Bct Here is this page in URL inspector:
Technical SEO | | ValnetIncBy comparison, we also have Organization schema (un-nested) on our homepage. Interestingly enough, the tools can detect that no problem. That's leading me to believe that either nested schema is unreadable by Googlebot OR that this is not an accurate representation of Googlebot and it's only unreadable by the testing tools. Here is the homepage in URL inspector:
In pseudo-code, our OLD schema looked like this: The NEW schema set up has the same Article schema set up, but the separate script for Organization has been removed. We made the change to embed our schema for a couple reasons: first, because Google's best practices say that if multiple schemas are used, Google will choose the best one so it's better to just have one script; second, Google's codelabs tutorial for schema uses a nested structure to indicate hierarchy of relevancy to the page. My question is, does nesting schemas like this make it impossible for Googlebot to detect a schema type that's 2 or more levels deep? Or is this just a bug with the testing tools?
0 -
Why is my entire page appearing as a video result (and only a video result)?
A page on my site is appearing as a video result. When you click on the link, it takes you to the page. The page does have a video on it, but it seems weird that the entire page would appear as (and only as) a video...
Technical SEO | | andrew.baldinger0 -
Can You Use More Then One Google Local Rich Snippet on a single site/ on a single page.
I am currently working on a website for a business that has multiple office locations. As I am trying to target all four locations I was wondering if it is okay to have more then one Local Rich Snippet on a single page. (For example they list all four locations and addresses within their footer and I was wondering if I could make these local rich snippets). What about having more then one on a single website. For example if a company has multiple offices located in several different cities and have set up individual contact pages for these cities, can each page have it's own Local Rich Snippet? Will Google look at these multiple "local rich snippets" as spaming or will they recognize the multiple locations and count it towards their local seo?
Technical SEO | | webdesignbarrie1 -
Sitewide Links delete or add nofollow
This question has been asked before, and I’ve read most of the answers. However, things are somewhat different, as we are a web hosting company and have many clients that link to us site wide in the footer, as well we have a website builder application where we control the footer links on our end user's websites. Most use just our “domain name” or “Powered by Domain” Should we remove them? It does provide visitors some value as they can tell where the website is hosting, has been developed or how to sign up for our website builder or web hosting services. Right now, they are all follow, and we are working on cleaning up our link profile so looking for some great advice on how to proceed. Our link profile is very large since we are a web hosting company that has been around for 10 plus years. Thanks in advanced for your recommendations.
Technical SEO | | goodhost0 -
Rich snippets for events
does anyone have any examples of how to use rich snippets for events? There are so many different variables and the Google examples are in sufficient
Technical SEO | | imageworks-2612900 -
Date in the video search results
How to control date display in the Google video SERP? Even if pages don't have dates in it, Google displays dates for some results. Try with this: Search query: Thanks video Check the third result.
Technical SEO | | gmk1567Thanks.
0 -
Delete old site but redirect domain to a new domain and site
I just have a quick query and I have a feeling about what the answer is so just wanted to see what you guys thought... Basically I am working on a client site. This client has a few other websites that are divisions of their company. However these divisions/websites are no longer used. They are wanting to delete the websites but redirect the domains to their name main website. They believe this will pass on SEO benefits as these old division sites are old and have a good PR and history. I'm unsure for DEFINITE, which way is correct?
Technical SEO | | Weerdboil0