Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
How can I make sure Google is crawling a link from an iframe (video)?
-
Do they crawl backlinks from an iframe example from a Youtube video embedded in a blog post? TIA!
-
That test in no-way proves that the link passed PageRank.
I'm not sure about an href within an iframe, but equally I don't see any reason why you would do that?
-
So this test is not true:
https://www.seroundtable.com/google-iframe-link-14558.html
What if there's an a href tag (can be seen through "inspect element") within the iframe embedded in a webpage?
-
Nope, they can't. Those links are within the iframe.
If you're trying to get link equity from embedded video, it'll need to be with crediting text links or images outside of the actual player, as overlays are done with JavaScript, which doesn't pass PageRank by all accounts.
-
We created videos that will be embedded to other sites and we have to take advantage of the backlinks.
Regarding Youtube videos, it was just another question if Google can crawl backlinks (the hyperlinked Youtube logo within a video embedded to an external site or webpage) of a Youtube page.
-
Not quite sure I understand... Are you trying to build links to the YouTube video on youtube.com? if so, an embed through an iframe does sort of count as a "link" to the video (i.e. it provides ranking equity), but only in the unique case of YouTube videos.
Or are you wondering if links in the descriptions/overlays will pass PageRank?
-
This is for link building, Ryan. Do you think Google will still follow the links from an iframe?
-
Ah, ya, since OP is asking about these videos after they're embedded in other sites maybe he means will this be like link building? Or maybe he's asking about view lift and popularity of the original video? OP, I think you'll need to clarify some to get a more precise answer.
-
I wrote that post, and it's now nearly three years out of date.
They have got better at crawling iframes since then, and now you can get a video indexed if it's embedded in an iframe.
However, I don't think this relates to the question specifically?
-
Google see iframes as basically "a window into other sites". As such, no, they don't crawl links in this way - however, they will likely then crawl the page which the iframe references, and thereby pick up any backlinks there.
I'm not quite sure how this might related to an embedded YouTube video, but YouTube videos are indexed instantly anyway once they're published because Google don't need to crawl YouTube (they have access to the database)
-
Thanks Ryan! These videos will be embedded in other websites.
-
This post is fairly extensive in regards to your question and should give you ideas even beyond what you're asking here, http://moz.com/blog/hosting-and-embedding-for-video-seo but if you're looking for the highlight, this is still pretty applicable advice today:
Embed the content with HTML5 and JavaScript or Flash, but not an iframe
Unfortunately, Google are not very good at crawling iframes at the moment; so if you want videos to be indexed, you need to make sure you’re embedding content in an HTML5 player with Flash fallback, or a pure Flash player.
If the video is being embedded on your own site you can also create a transcription for it on the same page and then place the links in according spots. Cheers!
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
-
Can you disallow links via Search Console?
Hey guys, Is it possible in anyway to nofollow links via search console (not disavow) but just nofollow external links pointing to your site? Cheers.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | lohardiu90 -
Can I add external links to my sitemap?
Hi, I'm integrating with a service that adds 3rd-party images/videos (owned by them, hosted on their server) to my site. For instance, the service might have tons of pictures/videos of cars; and then when I integrate, I can show my users these pictures/videos about cars I might be selling. But I'm wondering how to build out the sitemap--I would like to include reference to these images/videos, so Google knows I'm using lots of multimedia. How's the most white-hat way to do that? Can I add external links to my sitemap pointing to these images/videos hosted on a different server, or is that frowned upon? Thanks in advance.
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | SEOdub0 -
Google Adsbot crawling order confirmation pages?
Hi, We have had roughly 1000+ requests per 24 hours from Google-adsbot to our confirmation pages. This generates an error as the confirmation page cannot be viewed after closing or by anyone who didn't complete the order. How is google-adsbot finding pages to crawl that are not linked to anywhere on the site, in the sitemap or linked to anywhere else? Is there any harm in a google crawler receiving a higher percentage of errors - even though the pages are not supposed to be requested. Is there anything we can do to prevent the errors for the benefit of our network team and what are the possible risks of any measures we can take? This bot seems to be for evaluating the quality of landing pages used in for Adwords so why is it trying to access confirmation pages when they have not been set for any of our adverts? We included "Disallow: /confirmation" in the robots.txt but it has continued to request these pages, generating a 403 page and an error in the log files so it seems Adsbot doesn't follow robots.txt. Thanks in advance for any help, Sam
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | seoeuroflorist0 -
How can I make a list of all URLs indexed by Google?
I started working for this eCommerce site 2 months ago, and my SEO site audit revealed a massive spider trap. The site should have been 3500-ish pages, but Google has over 30K pages in its index. I'm trying to find a effective way of making a list of all URLs indexed by Google. Anyone? (I basically want to build a sitemap with all the indexed spider trap URLs, then set up 301 on those, then ping Google with the "defective" sitemap so they can see what the site really looks like and remove those URLs, shrinking the site back to around 3500 pages)
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | Bryggselv.no0 -
Can a large fluctuation of links cause traffic loss?
I've been asked to look at a site that has lost 70/80% if their search traffic. This happened suddenly around the 17th April. Traffic dropped off over a couple of days and then flat-lined over the next couple of weeks. The screenshot attached, shows the impressions/clicks reported in GWT. When I investigated I found: There had been no changes/updates to the site in question There were no messages in GWT indicating a manual penalty The number of pages indexed shows no significant change There are no particular trends in keywords/queries affected (they all were.) I did discover that ahrefs.com showed that a large number of links were reported lost on the 17th April. (17k links from 1 domain). These links reappeared around the 26th/27th April. But traffic shows no sign of any recovery. The links in question were from a single development server (that shouldn't have been indexed in the first place, but that's another matter.) Is it possible that these links were, maybe artificially, boosting the authority of the affected site? Has the sudden fluctuation in such a large number of links caused the site to trip an algorithmic penalty (penguin?) Without going into too much detail as I'm bound by client confidentiality - The affected site is really a large database and the links pointing to it are generated by a half dozen or so article based sister sites based on how the articles are tagged. The links point to dynamically generated content based on the url. The site does provide a useful/valuable service/purpose - it's not trying to "game the system" in order to rank. That doesn't mean to say that it hasn't been performing better in search than it should have been. This means that the affected site has ~900,000 links pointing to is that are the names of different "entities". Any thoughts/insights would be appreciated. I've expresses a pessimistic outlook to the client, but as you can imaging they are confused and concerned. LVSceCN.png
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | DougRoberts0 -
My website (non-adult) is not appearing in Google search results when i have safe search settings on. How can i fix this?
Hi, I have this issue where my website does not appear in Google search results when i have the safe search settings on. If i turn the safe search settings off, my site appears no problem. I'm guessing Google is categorizing my website as adult, which it definitely is not. Has anyone had this issue before? Or does anyone know how to resolve this issue? Any help would be much appreciated. Thanks
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | CupidTeam0 -
Outbound link to PDF vs outbound link to page
If you're trying to create a site which is an information hub, obviously linking out to authoritative sites is a good idea. However, does linking to a PDF have the same effect? e.g Linking to Google's SEO starter guide PDF, as opposed to linking to a google article on SEO. Thanks!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | underscorelive0 -
Google is mixing subdomains. What can we do?
Hi! I'm experiencing something that's kind of strange for me. I have my main domain let's say: www.domain.com. Then I have my mobile version in a subdomain: mobile.domain.com and I also have a german version of the website de.domain.com. When I Google my domain I have the main result linking to: www.domain.com but then Google mixes all the domains in the sites links. For example a Sing in may be linking mobile.domain.com, a How it works link may be pointing to de.domain.com, etc What's the solution? I think this is hurting a lot my position cause google sees that all are the same domain when clearly is not. thanks!!
Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fabrizzio0