Youtube as seen on error

[webfeatseo]

I have a yt channel with almost 9000 subscribers. On it i post video game guides (partnered through machinima so its allowed) and then i embed the videos onto my site.

All my competitors do teh same but when they do so it will display a message saying "As seen on "site name" " with a link there.

For whatever reason my site link does not show

It says As seen on but no link. not even my site name. it just says "As seen on BLANK"

How can I fix this?

[PhilNottingham]

I feel your pain. It's really irritating to see other sites getting some attribution for your work, but unfortunately we're dealing with relatively new functionality here and as such, it's not yet super sophisticated. Going forward, you may hopefully find that YT gets smarter at appropriating attribution to the content creators, but in the mean time - it has a choice between two relatively poor quality references and is simply picking one over the other.

I don't think it will have anything to do with your domain name, but you are currently not linking back to the original post on your site within the vid meta description. probably worth putting this in. It's only a nofollow link without anchor text, but still a relevant reference. You might also want to try linking back to your channel on the post with the embed code.

Another thing I would recommend trying is bringing in lots of views to the video on your own site. If two sites have embedded the content, but one is generating more views than the other, then these seems to me to be a relatively sensible metric for determining "as seen on" attribution. I haven't tested this to see if it's true, but It cant hurt to give it a go.

[webfeatseo]

That seems to reflect a lot of what I am seeing. I see a lot of people wondering why other sites are put in and theirs are not.

As for the idea about it being only on the blog post page and not my main site - - - -

Most the other sites that have videos mentioned on the as seen on also just have it on a news update post like me. Often with no backlinks and all as well.

I even had a lot of videos embedded on one my more important pages with thousands of backlinks and was my most viewed page for 2 months and it still did not trigger youtube to properly reference my site.

I found my youtube social page

http://www.youtube.com/social/blog/legendzelda

And it seems to be picking me up just fine. It just does not show my site name when it does show the "as seen on" I am thinking it may be because of my domain name. Thoughts on that?

Thanks so much for the help

[PhilNottingham]

Thanks for providing all the information! I've gone through everything in a bit of detail and ran it by some of the other SEOs here at Distilled and the prevailing opinion seems to be, "it's a very inexact science", which I know isn't what you'd want to here, but there are a few things which you can try to do to increase your chances of getting an "as seen on" listing in YT and picking up your own vids.

YouTube create as seen on listings, in the main, for high authority blogs which frequently reference YouTube videos. They don't worry about who has built the video - but rather, who embeds the video, provides a lot of supplementary information and provides "extra value" which may be of use to those watching the video on YouTube.

Now, while you have a high authority blog with some good links, the page with the video on it: http://legendzelda.net/skyward-sword/eldin-province-silent-realm-video-guide/ is extremely thin. There is no real "added value" on this page which means there is no real reason why I should watch it on your site rather than YouTube. The page also doesn't really have good authority metrics - with no links and social shares.

If you build more supporting content around the video and build the authority of the page - YouTube should start to reference your site for "as seen on", providing that you regularly embed YT videos and providing good supporting content.

Unfortunately, YouTube may always reference your competitors above you if they embed your video and provide better surrounding data. It's kinda sucky, but you're still getting the link and the referalls to the video. Couple of examples below of how Distilled videos have been claimed by competitors "as seen ons" and how we've randomly been given the links for various vids based purely on the blog post authority.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r4NsdU7P48g

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8-hZ4jx9Ko

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=32I_D6yxVY8

[webfeatseo]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tYE2pVGjZFE

That is one the videos. As you can see it says "As seen on" but there is no link to the site it is seen on which is

http://legendzelda.net

The channel

http://www.youtube.com/user/TheHiddenTriforce?feature=watch

Then we have this video, done by one my competitors of much smaller size

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVsEoAFItME&blend=1&lr=1&ob=0

Its as seen on goes to another one my competitors who posted the video for him

[PhilNottingham]

Hi Michelle,

This sounds interesting and I'd love to take a further look at it for you. Could you give me a link to the YT channel you mentioned and also some examples of the videos being embedded on other's sites without your link?

Thanks,

Phil.