Video Sitemap

TL;DR — A video sitemap is a special sitemap that tells Google about the videos on your pages. For each video you give Google four things: a thumbnail image, a title, a description, and a link to either the video file or the player that plays it. It helps Google find your videos — it doesn’t guarantee they’ll show up in search.

What a video sitemap is

A regular sitemap lists the pages on your site. A video sitemap adds extra information about any videos on those pages, using a set of special video: tags. For each video you tell Google the page it lives on, a thumbnail image to show, a title, a description, and where the video actually is (the file itself, or the player that plays it).

It’s the same idea as an image sitemap, just for video, and it slots into the same family as your XML sitemap.

When you actually need one

Google frames the value case narrowly: a video sitemap helps most with videos that are newly added or otherwise hard to discover — not with every video on your site. It’s most useful when:

• your videos are new, or loaded with JavaScript, or served in a way that’s hard to discover from the page’s HTML, or
• you want to give Google clean, explicit metadata (titles, descriptions, thumbnails) instead of leaving it to guess.

If you have just one or two embedded YouTube videos, you probably don’t need a separate file for it.

The four things every video needs

For each video, four pieces are required:

1. A thumbnail — a link to an image Google can show for the video.
2. A title.
3. A description.
4. Where the video is — either a link to the actual video file or a link to the player page that plays it (you need at least one of these).

Everything else — duration, upload date, view count, a “live” flag — is optional.

The one rule people forget

Every link in your video sitemap has to be reachable by Google: the page, the thumbnail, and the video file or player can’t be blocked in robots.txt or hidden behind a login. If Google can’t fetch the thumbnail or the video, the entry won’t do you any good.

And like every sitemap, a video sitemap helps Google discover your videos — it’s not a guarantee they’ll be indexed or shown.

Want the full tag list, the limits, and the exact file types Google accepts? Switch to the Advanced tab.

TL;DR — A video sitemap is an XML sitemap using the video:video extension (namespace http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-video/1.1), most useful for videos that are newly added or otherwise hard to discover. Required per video: <video:thumbnail_loc>, <video:title>, <video:description>, plus at least one of <video:content_loc> (the media file) or <video:player_loc> (the player) — neither can be the same URL as the page’s own <loc>. Optional tags refine it within limits — the repeated <video:tag> element caps at 32 per video (not a total-tag-count limit), duration 1–28,800 s, description ≤2,048 chars. You can nest multiple <video:video> blocks under one <loc> for a page with several videos. Every referenced URL must be crawlable (not robots-blocked, no login wall), and content_loc can’t be a streaming-only protocol. Use Google’s current content_loc and thumbnail file-type lists; the tags Google deprecated in 2022 are safe to leave in place. mRSS is an accepted alternative. Bing does not document video-sitemap support.

What a video sitemap actually is

A video sitemap is a normal XML sitemap with Google’s video extension switched on. You add the video namespace to your <urlset> — http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-video/1.1 — and then, inside each <url> block, you describe the videos on that page with <video:video> tags. The <loc> points at the page the video sits on (its landing page or watch page), not at the video file; the file lives inside <video:content_loc>.

You don’t have to maintain a separate file. You can add video:video blocks to an existing XML sitemap right alongside (or in the same way as) your page URLs — the same way image tags get folded into a regular sitemap. And there’s a non-XML option: Google also accepts an mRSS (Media RSS) feed as a way to provide the same video information.

When you need one

A video sitemap is the explicit way to tell Google what videos you have and how to present them. Google’s own framing is narrower than “use this for every video”: it calls out newly added videos and otherwise hard-to-discover content as where the extension earns its keep — for example, videos that are lazy-loaded, JavaScript-injected, or behind a custom player, or where you want full control over the title, description, and thumbnail Google associates with each video instead of letting it infer those. As with every sitemap, it’s a discovery aid — it helps Google find and understand your videos, but it never guarantees a video is indexed or surfaced.

Required tags

Every video needs a parent <video:video> block and, inside it, four required pieces of metadata:

• <video:video> — the parent element wrapping all the information about a single video.
• <video:thumbnail_loc> — “A URL pointing to the video thumbnail image file.”
• <video:title> — “The title of the video. All HTML entities must be escaped or wrapped in a CDATA block.”
• <video:description> — the description of the video (≤2,048 characters).
• At least one of:
  • <video:content_loc> — “A URL pointing to the actual video media file.” This is the one Google recommends when you can supply it.
  • <video:player_loc> — a URL to a player that embeds/plays the video.

If you can give both content_loc and player_loc, do — but one is enough to be valid. One constraint applies to both: neither content_loc nor player_loc can be the same URL as the page’s own <loc>. Google documents this requirement separately for each tag — it’s not optional, and it trips up sitemaps that reuse the landing-page URL as a placeholder media/player link.

Optional and recommended tags (and the limits)

Beyond the required set, you can refine each video with optional tags: <video:duration>, <video:expiration_date>, <video:rating>, <video:view_count>, <video:publication_date>, <video:family_friendly>, <video:restriction>, <video:platform>, <video:requires_subscription>, <video:uploader>, <video:live>, and <video:tag>. They help Google understand freshness, eligibility, and context — for example, expiration_date tells Google when to stop showing a video, and live flags a live stream.

Three limits to respect:

• <video:tag> caps at 32 per video. This is a limit on the repeated keyword-tag element specifically (create one <video:tag> per keyword, up to 32) — it is not a cap on the total number of metadata fields a <video:video> block can carry. A video with the four required tags plus several optional ones (duration, rating, publication date, and so on) is fine; only the count of <video:tag> elements is bounded at 32.
• <video:duration> must be 1–28,800 seconds (that’s a hard ceiling of 8 hours).
• <video:description> ≤2,048 characters.

Multiple videos on one page

If a single page hosts more than one video, you don’t create multiple <url> entries — you keep one <loc> for the page and nest multiple <video:video> blocks inside that same <url>. Each <video:video> describes one video, with its own thumbnail, title, description, and content/player link.

Accessibility: everything you reference must be crawlable

This is the rule that quietly breaks video sitemaps. Every URL you put in the file — the page in <loc>, the <video:thumbnail_loc>, and the <video:content_loc>/<video:player_loc> — has to be fetchable by Google:

• Not blocked in robots.txt. If the thumbnail directory or the media file is disallowed, Google can’t use it.
• Not behind a login wall or any access gate.
• content_loc must be a directly fetchable file — streaming-only protocols are not supported. If your video is only available over a streaming protocol rather than as a file Google can download, point Google at the player with player_loc instead, or provide a fetchable media file for content_loc.

Accepted file types

Use Google’s current lists here — the older enumeration that included formats like .flv and .ra/.ram is stale, and a lot of third-party guides still quote it.

<video:content_loc> media files — Google’s supported video formats are: 3GP, 3G2, ASF, AVI, DivX, M2V, M3U, M3U8, M4V, MKV, MOV, MP4, MPEG, OGV, QVT, RAM, RM, VOB, WebM, WMV, XAP. The file at that URL should be one of these and directly fetchable.

<video:thumbnail_loc> thumbnails — supported image formats are BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, WebP, SVG, and AVIF. The thumbnail must be at least 60×30 pixels (larger is preferred) and sit at a stable, crawlable URL — don’t point it at a URL that rotates or expires.

Deprecated tags (safe to leave)

Google announced this deprecation on May 6, 2022, effective August 6, 2022: <video:category>, the allow_embed and autoplay attributes on <video:player_loc>, <video:gallery_loc>, <video:price>, and <video:tvshow>. You don’t need to rush to strip these out. Per Google’s announcement, these tags “will have no effect on indexing and search features” and there’s “no immediate action required” — you can leave them in place without drawbacks. Remove them on your own schedule, or not at all.

How this fits the rest of the sitemap family

A video sitemap is one extension among several. The XML sitemap is the base format; the image sitemap is the parallel for images; a sitemap index ties multiple sitemap files together once you cross the 50,000-URL / 50MB-per-file limit; and the sitemaps overview covers when you need any of this at all and how to submit it. Video tags can live in their own file or be combined into a regular sitemap. For the bigger picture of how engines find your URLs in the first place, see discovery.

One scope note: this is Google’s extension. Bing does not document video-sitemap support — it defers to the base sitemaps.org protocol — so treat video:video as a Google feature and don’t expect Bing to act on it.

AI summary

A condensed take on the Advanced version:

• A video sitemap is an XML sitemap with Google’s video:video extension (namespace http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-video/1.1). The <loc> points at the page; the video metadata lives in <video:video> blocks inside it.
• Required per video: <video:thumbnail_loc>, <video:title>, <video:description>, plus at least one of <video:content_loc> (the media file, recommended) or <video:player_loc> (the player) — neither can equal the page’s own <loc>.
• Optional tags (duration, expiration_date, rating, view_count, publication_date, family_friendly, restriction, platform, requires_subscription, uploader, live, tag) refine it, within limits: the repeated <video:tag> element caps at 32/video (not a total-tag cap), duration 1–28,800 s (8 h), description ≤2,048 chars.
• Multiple videos on one page → nest multiple <video:video> blocks under a single <loc>, not separate <url> entries.
• Everything must be crawlable: page, thumbnail, and media/player URLs can’t be robots-blocked or behind a login. content_loc can’t be a streaming-only protocol — use a fetchable file or point at player_loc.
• File types (current list): content_loc accepts 3GP, 3G2, ASF, AVI, DivX, M2V, M3U, M3U8, M4V, MKV, MOV, MP4, MPEG, OGV, QVT, RAM, RM, VOB, WebM, WMV, XAP; thumbnails accept BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, WebP, SVG, AVIF (min 60×30 px, stable crawlable URL). The old .flv/.ra list is stale.
• Deprecated (announced May 2022, effective Aug 2022, safe to leave): category, player_loc allow_embed/autoplay, gallery_loc, price, tvshow.
• mRSS is an accepted alternative format. Bing does not document video-sitemap support. A sitemap helps discovery; it never guarantees indexing.

Official documentation

Primary-source documentation for video sitemaps.

Google

• Video sitemaps and alternatives — the reference for video:video and every required/optional tag, the namespace, the limits, and the mRSS alternative.
• Video best practices — supported file types — the current accepted content_loc media formats (3GP, 3G2, ASF, AVI, DivX, M2V, M3U, M3U8, M4V, MKV, MOV, MP4, MPEG, OGV, QVT, RAM, RM, VOB, WebM, WMV, XAP).
• Video best practices — thumbnails — thumbnail formats and the minimum 60×30 px requirement.
• Build and submit a sitemap — the base XML format, UTF-8 encoding, and the 50,000-URL / 50MB limits a video sitemap inherits.
• Combine sitemap extensions — how video, image, and hreflang tags coexist in one sitemap.
• Sitemaps overview — when you need a sitemap at all, and why it helps discovery but doesn’t guarantee indexing.
• Spring cleaning sitemap extensions — the May 6, 2022 announcement of the tags Google deprecated (effective August 6, 2022) and why leaving them in place is harmless.

Bing / Microsoft

• Bing does not publish dedicated video-sitemap documentation; it defers to the base sitemaps.org protocol. Treat video:video as a Google-specific extension.

Quotes from the source

On-the-record wording from Google’s video-sitemaps documentation. Each link is a deep link that jumps to the quoted passage on the source page.

Google — the required tags

• “A URL pointing to the video thumbnail image file.” — on <video:thumbnail_loc>. Jump to quote
• “The title of the video. All HTML entities must be escaped or wrapped in a CDATA block.” — on <video:title>. Jump to quote
• “A URL pointing to the actual video media file.” — on <video:content_loc> (the one Google recommends supplying). Jump to quote

Video sitemap — cheat sheet

Required vs optional video:video tags

Limits

Accepted file types

Don’t forget

• Every URL (page, thumbnail, media/player) must be crawlable — no robots.txt block, no login wall.
• content_loc can’t be a streaming-only protocol — it must be a fetchable file.
• content_loc and player_loc can’t be the same URL as the page’s own <loc>.
• The 32 limit is on <video:tag> elements specifically — not on total tags per video.
• Deprecated May 2022 (effective Aug 2022, safe to leave): category, player_loc allow_embed/autoplay, gallery_loc, price, tvshow.
• Bing does not document video-sitemap support.

A minimal valid video sitemap

The smallest video sitemap that validates: a urlset with the video namespace, one <url> for the page, and one <video:video> carrying the required tags (thumbnail + title + description + a content/player link).

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<urlset xmlns="http://www.sitemaps.org/schemas/sitemap/0.9"
        xmlns:video="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-video/1.1">
  <url>
    <loc>https://www.example.com/videos/some_video_landing_page.html</loc>
    <video:video>
      <video:thumbnail_loc>https://www.example.com/thumbs/123.jpg</video:thumbnail_loc>
      <video:title>Grilling steaks for summer</video:title>
      <video:description>How to get perfectly done steaks every time.</video:description>
      <video:content_loc>https://www.example.com/video123.mp4</video:content_loc>
      <video:player_loc>https://www.example.com/videoplayer.php?video=123</video:player_loc>
    </video:video>
  </url>
</urlset>

Two videos on one page

When a page hosts more than one video, keep a single <loc> and nest a second <video:video> block — don’t add another <url>.

<url>
  <loc>https://www.example.com/videos/roundup.html</loc>
  <video:video>
    <video:thumbnail_loc>https://www.example.com/thumbs/a.jpg</video:thumbnail_loc>
    <video:title>Part one</video:title>
    <video:description>The first video on the page.</video:description>
    <video:content_loc>https://www.example.com/a.mp4</video:content_loc>
  </video:video>
  <video:video>
    <video:thumbnail_loc>https://www.example.com/thumbs/b.jpg</video:thumbnail_loc>
    <video:title>Part two</video:title>
    <video:description>The second video on the same page.</video:description>
    <video:content_loc>https://www.example.com/b.mp4</video:content_loc>
  </video:video>
</url>

Reminder: content_loc must be a directly fetchable media file (no streaming-only protocols), and every URL here — page, thumbnail, media — has to be crawlable.

Video sitemap setup audit

Run through this before you submit (or resubmit) a video sitemap:

• <urlset> declares the video namespace: xmlns:video="http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-video/1.1".
• Every <video:video> block has all three required text tags — <video:thumbnail_loc>, <video:title>, <video:description>.
• Every <video:video> block has at least one of <video:content_loc> or <video:player_loc> (both if you can supply both).
• <video:content_loc> points at a directly fetchable media file — not a streaming-only protocol.
• <video:thumbnail_loc> is a stable, non-expiring URL, at least 60×30 px, in a supported format (BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, WebP, SVG, AVIF).
• <video:description> is 2,048 characters or fewer.
• Any <video:duration> present is between 1 and 28,800 seconds.
• No single video has more than 32 <video:tag> elements (this cap is on the repeated keyword tag only, not on the video’s total metadata fields).
• <video:content_loc> and <video:player_loc> are not the same URL as the page’s own <loc>.
• The page URL, thumbnail URL, and media/player URL are all crawlable — none blocked in robots.txt, none behind a login wall.
• Multiple videos on one page are nested as multiple <video:video> blocks under a single <loc>, not spread across duplicate <url> entries.
• Sitemap is submitted in Google Search Console. (Skip Bing here — it doesn’t document video-sitemap support.)
• Sitemap validates cleanly before and after submission.

Tools for building and checking a video sitemap

• Sitemap Validator — paste, upload, or fetch your sitemap by URL and get errors, warnings, and a health score with line numbers, entirely in your browser. Use it on the video sitemap itself to catch malformed XML, missing required video: tags, and namespace mistakes before you submit.
• XML Sitemap Generator — generates a base XML sitemap from a capped, robots-respecting crawl of your site. It builds the page inventory (<loc>, lastmod) but doesn’t add video:video tags — use it for the base file, then layer video metadata in yourself or via your CMS/generator.
• Google Search Console — Sitemaps report — confirms Google fetched and processed the file, and flags parsing errors it found on its side.
• Google Search Console — URL Inspection — checks whether a specific video page was crawled and indexed, useful when a sitemap validates cleanly but a video still isn’t showing up.

Common issues

Video isn’t indexed even though the sitemap validates

• Likely cause: a sitemap only helps Google discover the video — it’s never a guarantee of indexing.
• Fix: confirm the page itself isn’t noindex, check Search Console’s URL Inspection for crawl/indexing errors on that specific page, and make sure the thumbnail and content/player URLs are actually reachable (not just present in the XML).

Thumbnail rejected or not showing

• Likely cause: image is smaller than 60×30 px, in an unsupported format, or sits at a URL that rotates/expires.
• Fix: use a stable, crawlable URL with a supported format (BMP, GIF, JPEG, PNG, WebP, SVG, AVIF) at least 60×30 px — bigger is preferred.

content_loc never gets picked up

• Likely cause: the URL points at a streaming-only protocol rather than a directly fetchable file.
• Fix: point content_loc at a fetchable media file, or drop back to player_loc if you can only offer a streaming player.

Whole <video:video> entry seems ignored

• Likely cause: one of the four required pieces is missing — thumbnail, title, description, or both of content/player links.
• Fix: check the entry against the required-tag list; a missing required tag can invalidate the whole video block, not just that field.

Description looks truncated or the tag throws a parsing error

• Likely cause: <video:description> exceeds the 2,048-character limit.
• Fix: trim to an excerpt under the limit rather than the full text.

Video sitemap “doesn’t work” on Bing

• Likely cause: Bing does not document support for the video:video extension at all.
• Fix: don’t rely on a video sitemap to influence Bing — it defers to the base sitemaps.org protocol regardless of what video tags you add.

AI prompts for video sitemaps

Audit an existing video:video entry for missing or invalid tags

Paste in one or more <video:video> XML blocks from your sitemap.

Here is a <video:video> entry from my video sitemap:

[paste the XML block]

Check it against these rules and list every violation:
- Required: video:thumbnail_loc, video:title, video:description, and at least
  one of video:content_loc or video:player_loc.
- video:content_loc and video:player_loc must not be the same URL as the page's
  own <loc>.
- video:description must be 2,048 characters or fewer.
- video:duration (if present) must be between 1 and 28,800 seconds.
- No more than 32 video:tag elements inside this one video:video block (this
  limit applies to repeated video:tag elements only, not to total tags).
Report each violation as: tag name, what's wrong, and the minimal fix.

Expect back a short list of pass/fail checks against the rules above — not a general opinion on video quality.

Draft a compliant video:video block from raw metadata

Paste a row (or a few rows) of video metadata you already have — page URL, thumbnail URL, title, description, media/player URL, duration in seconds.

I have this video metadata:
Page URL: [url]
Thumbnail URL: [url]
Title: [title]
Description: [description, under 2048 characters]
Media file URL (or player URL): [url]
Duration in seconds: [number]

Generate a valid <video:video> XML block using Google's video sitemap
extension (namespace http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-video/1.1),
escaping any HTML entities in the title, and confirm the description is
under 2,048 characters.

Expect back one ready-to-paste <video:video> block — check the escaped title and the character count yourself before shipping it, since the model can miscount.

Resources worth your time

My related writing

• The Beginner’s Guide to Technical SEO — where sitemaps and discovery fit in the bigger picture.
• When Should You Worry About Crawl Budget? — keeping a clean, accurate inventory of the URLs (and media) you want crawled.
• Enterprise Technical SEO — my case for automating sitemaps from the pages you actually have, so they don’t rot.

From others

• Google’s video sitemaps reference — the canonical tag list and limits.
• Google’s video best practices — the current accepted media and thumbnail file types (the source for the lists most third-party guides get wrong).
• Google’s combining sitemap extensions — official guidance on mixing video, image, and hreflang tags in a single sitemap file.
• sitemaps.org protocol — the base XML schema that video sitemaps extend; also what Bing defers to.
• r/TechSEO — the community for sitemap and indexing debugging.

Test yourself: Video sitemaps

Five quick questions on video sitemap requirements and limits. Pick an answer for each, then check.

Video sitemap

A video sitemap is an XML sitemap (or mRSS feed) that uses the video:video extension to tell Google about videos hosted on your pages — the landing page, a thumbnail, a title, a description, and a link to the video file or player. It helps Google discover and surface video content, but it doesn't guarantee indexing.

Related: Sitemap, XML sitemap, Image sitemap

Video sitemap

A video sitemap is a standard XML sitemap extended with Google’s video namespace (http://www.google.com/schemas/sitemap-video/1.1), used to describe the videos that live on your pages. Each <url> block names the page the video sits on in <loc>, and one or more <video:video> blocks inside it carry the video’s metadata. You can also supply the same information as an mRSS (Media RSS) feed instead of XML.

For every video, four pieces of metadata are required — a <video:thumbnail_loc> (the thumbnail image), a <video:title>, a <video:description>, and at least one of <video:content_loc> (a link to the actual media file) or <video:player_loc> (a link to a player that embeds it). A range of optional tags (<video:duration>, <video:publication_date>, <video:expiration_date>, <video:rating>, <video:view_count>, <video:live>, and more) can refine how a video is understood, within limits: no more than 32 tags per video, a duration between 1 and 28,800 seconds, and a description of at most 2,048 characters.

Like every sitemap, a video sitemap helps discovery but doesn’t guarantee a video gets indexed or shown. Every URL it references — the landing page, the thumbnail, the media file or player — has to be crawlable: not blocked by robots.txt, not behind a login wall, and reachable as a normally fetchable file (streaming-only protocols aren’t supported for content_loc). If you don’t want to maintain a separate file, you can add video:video blocks to an existing XML sitemap alongside your page URLs.

Related: Sitemap, XML sitemap, Image sitemap

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