Skip to content
    Moz logo Menu open Menu close
    • Products
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Pro Home
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Home
      • STAT
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Home
      • Compare SEO Products
      • Moz Data
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis
      • Keyword Explorer
      • Link Explorer
      • Competitive Research
      • MozBar
      • More Free SEO Tools
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO
      • SEO Learning Center
      • Moz Academy
      • MozCon
      • Webinars, Whitepapers, & Guides
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers
      • Agency Solutions
      • Enterprise Solutions
      • Small Business Solutions
      • The Moz Story
      • New Releases
    • Log in
    • Log out
    • Products
      • Moz Pro

        Your all-in-one suite of SEO essentials.

      • Moz Local

        Raise your local SEO visibility with complete local SEO management.

      • STAT

        SERP tracking and analytics for enterprise SEO experts.

      • Moz API

        Power your SEO with our index of over 44 trillion links.

      • Compare SEO Products

        See which Moz SEO solution best meets your business needs.

      • Moz Data

        Power your SEO strategy & AI models with custom data solutions.

      Enhance Keyword Discovery with Bulk Analysis
      Moz Pro

      Enhance Keyword Discovery with Bulk Analysis

      Learn more
    • Free SEO Tools
      • Domain Analysis

        Get top competitive SEO metrics like DA, top pages and more.

      • Keyword Explorer

        Find traffic-driving keywords with our 1.25 billion+ keyword index.

      • Link Explorer

        Explore over 40 trillion links for powerful backlink data.

      • Competitive Research

        Uncover valuable insights on your organic search competitors.

      • MozBar

        See top SEO metrics for free as you browse the web.

      • More Free SEO Tools

        Explore all the free SEO tools Moz has to offer.

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic
      Moz Pro

      NEW Keyword Suggestions by Topic

      Learn more
    • Learn SEO
      • Beginner's Guide to SEO

        The #1 most popular introduction to SEO, trusted by millions.

      • SEO Learning Center

        Broaden your knowledge with SEO resources for all skill levels.

      • On-Demand Webinars

        Learn modern SEO best practices from industry experts.

      • How-To Guides

        Step-by-step guides to search success from the authority on SEO.

      • Moz Academy

        Upskill and get certified with on-demand courses & certifications.

      • MozCon

        Save on Early Bird tickets and join us in London or New York City

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing
      Moz API

      Access 20 years of data with flexible pricing

      Find your plan
    • Blog
    • Why Moz
      • Digital Marketers

        Simplify SEO tasks to save time and grow your traffic.

      • Small Business Solutions

        Uncover insights to make smarter marketing decisions in less time.

      • Agency Solutions

        Earn & keep valuable clients with unparalleled data & insights.

      • Enterprise Solutions

        Gain a competitive edge in the ever-changing world of search.

      • The Moz Story

        Moz was the first & remains the most trusted SEO company.

      • New Releases

        Get the scoop on the latest and greatest from Moz.

      Surface actionable competitive intel
      New Feature

      Surface actionable competitive intel

      Learn More
    • Log in
      • Moz Pro
      • Moz Local
      • Moz Local Dashboard
      • Moz API
      • Moz API Dashboard
      • Moz Academy
    • Avatar
      • Moz Home
      • Notifications
      • Account & Billing
      • Manage Users
      • Community Profile
      • My Q&A
      • My Videos
      • Log Out

    The Moz Q&A Forum

    • Forum
    • Questions
    • Users
    • Ask the Community

    Welcome to the Q&A Forum

    Browse the forum for helpful insights and fresh discussions about all things SEO.

    1. Home
    2. SEO Tactics
    3. Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    4. How can I make sure Google is crawling a link from an iframe (video)?

    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)?

    Intermediate & Advanced SEO
    3
    12
    3037
    Loading More Posts
    • Oldest to Newest
    • Newest to Oldest
    • Most Votes
    Reply
    • Reply as question
    Log in to reply
    This topic has been deleted. Only users with question management privileges can see it.
    • zpm2014
      zpm2014 Subscriber last edited by

      Do they crawl backlinks from an iframe example from a Youtube video embedded in a blog post? TIA!

      1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
      • PhilNottingham
        PhilNottingham @zpm2014 last edited by

        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?

        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
        • zpm2014
          zpm2014 Subscriber @PhilNottingham last edited by

          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?

          PhilNottingham 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
          • PhilNottingham
            PhilNottingham @zpm2014 last edited by

            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.

            zpm2014 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
            • zpm2014
              zpm2014 Subscriber @PhilNottingham last edited by

              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.

              PhilNottingham 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
              • PhilNottingham
                PhilNottingham @zpm2014 last edited by

                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?

                zpm2014 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                • zpm2014
                  zpm2014 Subscriber @RyanPurkey last edited by

                  This is for link building, Ryan. Do you think Google will still follow the links from an iframe?

                  PhilNottingham 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                  • RyanPurkey
                    RyanPurkey @PhilNottingham last edited by

                    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.

                    zpm2014 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                    • PhilNottingham
                      PhilNottingham @RyanPurkey last edited by

                      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?

                      RyanPurkey 1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                      • PhilNottingham
                        PhilNottingham last edited by

                        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)

                        1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 1
                        • zpm2014
                          zpm2014 Subscriber @RyanPurkey last edited by

                          Thanks Ryan! These videos will be embedded in other websites.

                          1 Reply Last reply Reply Quote 0
                          • RyanPurkey
                            RyanPurkey last edited by

                            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!

                            zpm2014 PhilNottingham 2 Replies Last reply Reply Quote 1
                            • 1 / 1
                            • First post
                              Last post

                            Got a burning SEO question?

                            Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.


                            Start my free trial


                            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.

                            • See all categories

                            Related Questions

                            • SEOdub

                              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 | | SEOdub
                              0
                            • placementLabs

                              How can I stop spam Google Organic traffic?

                              Hey Moz, I'm a rather experienced SEO who just encountered a problem I have never faced. I am hoping to get some advice or be pointed in the right direction. I just started work for a new client. Really great client and website. Nicer than most design/content. They will need some rel canonical work but that is not the issue here. The traffic looked great at first glance 131k visits in April. Google Analytics Acquisition Overview showed 94% of the traffic as organic. When I dug deeper and looked at the organic source I saw that Google was 99.9% of it. Normal enough. Then I looked at the time on site and my jaw dropped. 118,454 Organic New Users for Google only stayed on the site for 3 seconds. There is no way that the traffic is real. It does not match what Google Webmaster tools, Moz, and Ahrefs are telling me. How do I stop a service that is sending fake organic Google traffic?

                              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | placementLabs
                              0
                            • A Former User

                              Does google credit links from iFrames or created by Javascript, if so, is one more powerful than the other?

                              Consider this example, because I want to be clear about what I mean.  You have two websites.  Lets all them www.a.com and www.b.com. On www.a.com/some/page, there is an iframe something like this:
                              <iframe src="www.b.com/some/special/path"></iframe>
                              Then content of this iframe is a bunch of pictures, text and numbers, as well as a group of links, linking each picture to www.b.com for example the links might be:
                              www.b.com/content/1
                              www.b.com/content/2
                              www.b.com/content/3 Questions: When google crawls **www.a.com/some/page, **does it pass link juice to www.b.com/content/*? Does google instead consider these to be internal links within b.com itself.  because links to www.b.com/content/ ** are actually from b.com itself, since the domain of the iframe is actually: www.b.com/some/special/path 3) Is there any amount of link juice passed from www.a.com/some/page to* www.b.com/some/special/path **because this is the src= element of an iframe that a.com is hosting? Consider an alternative setup.  Where instead of using an iframe the contents of the above described iFrame is actually added the the page dynamically using javascript, and a call to an API endpoint at b.com.  Resulting in these links being added directly to the body of a.com without being wrapped in an iframe element. Questions:
                              4) Do these links that were created after page load still get crawled and credited by google? (i have heard in the past that google was going to start crawling javascript, i just don't know if this is known for a fact yet).
                              5) Do links created on the client side hold the same weight as a link that was served directly via the backend html generation? If both the links within the iframe and the links within the javascript embed method pass link juice.  Is one preferred over the other? is one known to be more effective than the other? Thanks!

                              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | A Former User
                              0
                            • fablau

                              Is Google indexing Mp3 audio and MIDI music files? Can that cause any duplicate problems?

                              Hello, I own virtualsheetmusic.com website and we have several thousands of media files (Mp3 and MIDI files) that potentially Google can index. If that's the case, I am wondering if that could cause any "duplicate" issues of some sort since many of such media files have  exact file names or same meta information inside. Any thoughts about this issue are very welcome! Thank you in advance to anyone.

                              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | fablau
                              0
                            • sbrault74

                              Google Indexing Feedburner Links???

                              I just noticed that for lots of the articles on my website, there are two results in Google's index. For instance: http://www.thewebhostinghero.com/articles/tools-for-creating-wordpress-plugins.html and http://www.thewebhostinghero.com/articles/tools-for-creating-wordpress-plugins.html?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+thewebhostinghero+(TheWebHostingHero.com) Now my Feedburner feed is set to "noindex" and it's always been that way. The canonical tag on the webpage is set to: rel='canonical' href='http://www.thewebhostinghero.com/articles/tools-for-creating-wordpress-plugins.html' /> The robots tag is set to: name="robots" content="index,follow,noodp" /> I found out that there are scrapper sites that are linking to my content using the Feedburner link. So should the robots tag be set to "noindex" when the requested URL is different from the canonical URL? If so, is there an easy way to do this in Wordpress?

                              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | sbrault74
                              0
                            • fabrizzio

                              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 | | fabrizzio
                              0
                            • JohnPeters

                              "Jump to" Links in Google, how do you get them?

                              I have just seen yoast.com results in Google and noticed that nearly all the indexed pages show a "Jump to" link So instead of showing the full URL under the title tag, it shows these type of links yoast.com › SEO
                              yoast.com › Social Media
                              yoast.com › Analytics With the SEO, Social Media and Analytics all being clickable. How has he achieved this? And is it something to try and incorporate in my sites?

                              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | JohnPeters
                              0
                            • AWCthreads

                              Can Affiliate Links Harm Your Rank?

                              Does Google interpret Affiliate links as paid links? If so, can Affiliate links harm your rank if they are not properly tagged with a no-follow? Thanks.

                              Intermediate & Advanced SEO | | AWCthreads
                              0

                            Get started with Moz Pro!

                            Unlock the power of advanced SEO tools and data-driven insights.

                            Start my free trial
                            Products
                            • Moz Pro
                            • Moz Local
                            • Moz API
                            • Moz Data
                            • STAT
                            • Product Updates
                            Moz Solutions
                            • SMB Solutions
                            • Agency Solutions
                            • Enterprise Solutions
                            • Digital Marketers
                            Free SEO Tools
                            • Domain Authority Checker
                            • Link Explorer
                            • Keyword Explorer
                            • Competitive Research
                            • Brand Authority Checker
                            • Local Citation Checker
                            • MozBar Extension
                            • MozCast
                            Resources
                            • Blog
                            • SEO Learning Center
                            • Help Hub
                            • Beginner's Guide to SEO
                            • How-to Guides
                            • Moz Academy
                            • API Docs
                            About Moz
                            • About
                            • Team
                            • Careers
                            • Contact
                            Why Moz
                            • Case Studies
                            • Testimonials
                            Get Involved
                            • Become an Affiliate
                            • MozCon
                            • Webinars
                            • Practical Marketer Series
                            • MozPod
                            Connect with us

                            Contact the Help team

                            Join our newsletter
                            Moz logo
                            © 2021 - 2025 SEOMoz, Inc., a Ziff Davis company. All rights reserved. Moz is a registered trademark of SEOMoz, Inc.
                            • Accessibility
                            • Terms of Use
                            • Privacy

                            Looks like your connection to Moz was lost, please wait while we try to reconnect.