# Video sitemap Category: [Crawling & Indexing](https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/category/crawling-indexing/) › [Sitemaps & feeds](https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/category/crawling-indexing/sitemaps-feeds/) A **video sitemap** is an XML sitemap with extra details about videos embedded on pages of a site. Google learns where a video is, what it is called and what it looks like. ## What goes into a video sitemap? Each page with a video gets a `video:video` block. Required are a thumbnail (`video:thumbnail_loc`), a title and a description. You also need either the address of the video file (`video:content_loc`) or of the player (`video:player_loc`). Google recommends `content_loc` where possible, and `player_loc` fits videos embedded from a platform such as YouTube or Vimeo. Optional fields include the duration (1 to 28,800 seconds) and up to 32 tags per video. A description can have at most 2,048 characters. Googlebot must be able to reach every URL, without login and without a robots.txt block. The usual sitemap limits of 50,000 URLs and 50 MB apply per file. Larger sets are split and combined in a sitemap index. Google also accepts mRSS feeds as an alternative. ## Example ```xml https://example.com/videos/change-a-chain/ https://example.com/img/chain.jpg How to change a bike chain Open the chain, replace it and close it again. https://example.com/media/chain.mp4 312 ``` ## Sitemap types compared | Type | Purpose | Limits | Required elements | |---|---|---|---| | XML sitemap | a file with information about the pages, videos and other files on a site and the relationships between them | at most 50,000 URLs or 50 MB (uncompressed) per file; UTF-8, absolute URLs | urlset, and per URL a url with loc | | Sitemap index | groups several sitemaps so they can be submitted together | at most 50,000 sitemaps and 50 MB per index; up to 500 index files per site in Search Console | sitemapindex, and per sitemap a sitemap with loc | | Image sitemap | tells Google about images it might not otherwise find, such as images loaded with JavaScript | up to 1,000 image:image per url; otherwise as for XML sitemaps | image:image with image:loc | | Video sitemap | adds information about videos hosted on the pages | as for XML sitemaps; description at most 2,048 characters | video:video with video:thumbnail_loc, video:title, video:description and either video:content_loc or video:player_loc | | News sitemap | tells Google about news articles with extra details | up to 1,000 news:news per file; only articles from the last two days | news:news with news:publication (news:name, news:language), news:publication_date, news:title | | Sitemap with hreflang | lists the language and regional versions of a page | as for XML sitemaps | per url a loc and one xhtml:link rel="alternate" hreflang="…" for every version, including the page itself | | HTML sitemap | a page of links for visitors to the site | – (not part of the sitemap protocol; Google says it cannot be submitted as a sitemap. Source: Google Search Central Blog, 2005) | – | Sources: [Google Search Central: Build and submit a sitemap (last updated 2025-12-10)](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/sitemaps/build-sitemap); [Google Search Central: Manage your sitemaps with sitemap index files](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/sitemaps/large-sitemaps); [Google Search Central: Image sitemaps](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/sitemaps/image-sitemaps); [Google Search Central: Video sitemaps](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/sitemaps/video-sitemaps); [Google Search Central: Create a news sitemap](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/sitemaps/news-sitemap); [Google Search Central: Localized versions of your pages (sitemap method)](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/specialty/international/localized-versions); [sitemaps.org: Sitemaps XML format](https://www.sitemaps.org/protocol.html); [Google Search Central Blog (2005): How is a Google Sitemap different from an HTML sitemap?](https://developers.google.com/search/blog/2005/09/how-is-google-sitemap-different-from). Last checked: October 8, 2026 ## Related terms - [XML sitemap](https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/xml-sitemap/index.md) - [Sitemap index](https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/sitemap-index/index.md) - [HTML sitemap](https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/html-sitemap/index.md) - [Video schema](https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/video-schema/index.md) ## Sources - [Video sitemaps – Google Search Central](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/sitemaps/video-sitemaps) - [Build and submit a sitemap – Google Search Central](https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/sitemaps/build-sitemap) --- Last updated: October 8, 2026 URL: https://seo-geo-glossary.com/en/glossary/video-sitemap/