I usually see it when it's a Universal Search result that is tagged as "Video Results for [keyowrd]". There's nothing you can do to make it happen, that I know of. It's Google's automated decision.

The frustrating thing is that of course every YouTube video page entry has the image next to the result. So, one of my pages ranks higher than the YouTube page but since I don't have an image next to mine I'm sure a lot of people skip it and go right to the YouTube Video.

Under [webmasterworld.com...] you may find some suggestions on what to do to get the video indexed. But this thread is 18 months old.

I'd really like to see this issue updated.

In particular, I'm wondering, whether it is worth the effort, yet, to add sound (speech) in a language other than English. Also, what requirements to quality are recommended to get google's algo understand spoken language.

Secondly, under
[google.com...]

among other advices I found this point:

"Googlebot does not execute some types of JavaScript. If your webpage uses JavaScript to load a Flash file, we may not be able to discover and index the contents of that file."

But today I discovered a video from clipfish in the regular serps, and from what I have seen, clipfish in fact uses such a javascript-based swf-player. So all in all I'm also quite confused.

I raised a couple of questions on video and indexing here on webmasterworld the past two weeks. The fact, that interest in this subject is relatively low, indicates to me, that there are great chances in this field at the moment.

Google began to index Flash text more in-depth during 2008, mostly to provide better snippets. As part of that effort, they now can find Flash files that are served via some kinds of javascript - most notably, the Google Code division recommends SWFObject script [code.google.com].

Also note this official Google blog post from 2008:

For our July 1st launch, we didn't enable Flash indexing for Flash files embedded via SWFObject. We're now rolling out an update that enables support for common JavaScript techniques for embedding Flash, including SWFObject and SWFObject2.

[googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com...]

Thx for both those links,tedster, very much appreciated.

> most notably, the Google Code division recommends SWFObject script.

I bought a license for a different swf-player. Does this mean google is going to kick those tools out of the market with a free and self-developed application? Should I switch?

SWFObject is a relatively small script for detecting Flash capability and then writing the embed code into the page's source. So it's not a player on its own, it's an embedding method.

The script allows you to serve HTML source code by default, so user-agents that do not support Flash or javascript will still get "alternative" content by default. When Flash capability is detected, the div with the HTML gets overwritten via the DOM.

Thanks for the replies. I'm not having any issues getting these pages indexed as there's enough description to allow for that.

I did a search for the page I noticed yesterday with the image next to the search result and today there's no image...Go Figure. Other pages have images. Looks like it's totally random how Google is pulling the image off the video and putting it next to the page. No images are showing up in Yahoo as far as I can tell.

The tips on indexing video's are appreciated.

hey, it might just be Google testing different ways to serve the results - and if so, it wouldn't necessarily be repeatable. They do that kind of testing a lot, often on a limited scale (just some queries, users, browsers, whatever they choose.)

> Looks like it's totally random how Google is pulling the image off the video and putting it next to the page.

If you really mean 'how' (not 'whether';): Most players allow to define a specific dump-jpeg in case you provide one. Another option is the video-sitemap, where you may also specify an image.

[googlewebmastercentral.blogspot.com...]

> SWFObject is a relatively small script for detecting Flash capability and then writing the embed code into the page's source.

Well, this is what my player also does. How important do you regard the alternative content with respect to SEO? I did what this code should do: Explain to my visitor why the video cannot be played and advise him to download latest Adobe flash-player upgrade. But this explanation of course does hardly contain text describing the video-content.

Maybe I shoud add such text-content, because at the moment it is really just a video, thus completely unparseable. But I'm planning to learn more abouf swf and it's active scripting in order to add text and links inside the player in the near future. Do you think it is inevitable to buy adobe flash for developing such applications?

How important do you regard the alternative content with respect to SEO?

I find it to be huge, especially for Flash-heavy pages. The indexing of Flash text, at the moment, seems to be mostly for creating the snippet. But the html content can be indexed and actually get RANKED, according to the relevance of its content. That's something I still don't see much of for a pure flash url. If a Flash enabled browser clicks on the url, they still get served the Flash.

In this way, the approach used by the SWFobject script is simply a "better mousetrap", at least for now. When a non-Flash user agent gets served the HTML content by default, you've got something very sweet.

> The indexing of Flash text, at the moment, seems to be mostly for creating the snippet.

OK. But we should assume that google will improve this in the near future.

> But the html content can be indexed and actually get RANKED, according to the relevance of its content.

Sure. But this is old scholl. What I'm aiming at is: In a way the flash-player is a browser inside a browser. You may stuff a relatively small amount of screenspace with a potentially infinite set of content, including extra navigation. And sooner or later google will be able to read and index this. Chances are now to be ahead in this field, and time has always played a major role in indexing and ranking.

My personal opinion and prediction - full indexing of Flash content will be a very slow development. Yes, it is very much like a "browser within a browser" - and as such, Flash technology offers its own unique set of spammy tricks for hidden content and so on. There's also chances for code that might unintentionally act like spammy tricks. This will not be sorted out quickly.

I think audio-to-text conversion/indexing may even be a sooner development, and I don't expect to see that within 2009 to any major degree.

SWFObject is not so very old school. Google only recommended it within the last half year, even though some sites have been enjoying the benefits for a good while longer than that.

It comes and it goes on our search results. We have a YouTube video, and the artwork pops up on it some days. Then, the next day, it's gone. Then it's back. Today, it's gone.

Run a search for "Google webmaster tools" and you'll see a nice little video of Mr. Cutts in the listings with a thumbnail. It's been there consistently for a long time.

I think audio-to-text conversion/indexing may even be a sooner development

Right on Ted. I think they've been working feverishly on this for a while. How else could they be effective at placing contextually relevant ads alongside videos?

[edited by: SEOMike at 4:14 pm (utc) on Jan. 6, 2009]

I think audio-to-text conversion/indexing may even be a sooner development

I agree on this as well 100% so,

My question on the above statement is since we all know our sites need to be in compatible with the handicapped we are beginning to look at adding closed caption text to the videos we produce.

This will be audible to the blind and hearing impaired can read the text produced with the video software they use to view them.

Now that all said any comments on the value this will have on the SE's indexing and possible added search value?

> Now that all said any comments on the value this will have on the SE's indexing and possible added search value?

I believe it is quite likely this will have a positive impact on ranking. From the very beginning of the internet search engines were said to be "blind" and guaranteed good ranking for text-rich-websites.

Flash-based-sites were largely ignored. It is sort of irony of history if now flash-videos and "understanding spoken language" may on another level again boost blind-friendly websites. But it'd be the spoken text, not the videos.

Again my question: Which languages? Only english?