Add indexifembedded to embed URL page

PeerTube
1

To optimize indexing and give video embeds the best opportunity to appear for relevant searches, add indexifembedded to the robots directive on the embed URL page.

<meta name="robots" content="noindex, indexifembedded" />

The practical reason for adding this is because people can embed videos on their site, and make those pages eligible for video results in Google Search. Without it, only the PeerTube video pages are eligible.

References:

2

Hi & thanks,

We remove the noindex tag in Fix no index on embeds · Chocobozzz/PeerTube@b35127e · GitHub
Server automatically injects the canonical URL targeting the « watch page » in the embed page.

3

noindex should always be on the embed page. Otherwise, it makes it eligible to be indexed. Changing the canonical link isn’t sufficient, because Google treats the canonical link as a hint now, and its algorithm may prefer to index and return the embed page instead of the page where the video has been embedded, especially if the video is embedded in an article or page that’s not a watch page. That’s why indexifembedded was created. It’s the only reliable method to ensure embed pages are never indexed.

4

Understood, and thanks for the explanation. Do you think we should also indexifembedded unlisted and remote videos?

5

Yes, I recommend the following robots directive be permanent on the embed URL page, even if the video is unlisted:

<meta name="robots" content="noindex, indexifembedded" />

The reason I recommend that is because people who choose to make a video unlisted don’t want it to be discovered on their PeerTube instance, but they still want it discoverable if they embed it on a public page on their site. Consider the following:

  • To keep a video on the PeerTube instance from competing with the same video embedded on a site, the video needs to be unlisted, and indexifembedded must be present for the embedded video on their site to be indexed.
  • On YouTube, they don’t use indexifembedded if you unlist a video, which means if you embed the video on your site, it won’t be indexed. By adding and keeping indexifembedded for unlisted videos, you create a competitive advantage against YouTube. YouTube doesn’t include it because they can’t monetize unlisted videos, and therefore don’t want it to be indexed if someone embeds it elsewhere.
  • If someone doesn’t want an embedded video discovered and indexed on their site, they can either embed it on a private password-protected page that bots can’t access or add noindex to the page.

Remote videos may be the exception to everything I’ve said. If a PeerTube admin is syncing/copying videos from other platforms, they may not want their embedded videos indexed, especially if they don’t own the copyright. I would default to including indexifembedded but you may want to consider providing an option when adding a remote channel to make embedded videos not discoverable by search engine bots. If checked, remove indexifembedded from the embed URL page.

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6

Thanks!

I implemented indexifembedded in Use indexifembedded for embeds · Chocobozzz/PeerTube@f0f44e1 · GitHub

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