Posted by Dr. Pete

In the wake of Google’s Panda updates, there’s been a lot of fear regarding user metrics and how they impact SEO.  Many people are afraid that “bad” signals in analytics data, especially high bounce rates and low time-on-site, could potentially harm their rankings.

I don’t think Google is tapping into analytics data directly (I’ll defend that later), and I don’t think they have to. There are two user metrics that both Google and Bing have direct access to: (1) SERP CTR, and (2) “Dwell time”, and I think those two metrics can tell them a lot about your site.

Google Analytics (GA) & SEO

The official word from Google is that analytics data is not used for ranking. Whether or not you believe that is entirely up to you, and I’m not here to argue about it. I’ll only say that it’s rare to hear Matt say something that emphatically.  I think the arguments against using analytics directly as a ranking factor are much more practical in nature…

(1) Not Everyone Uses GA

Usage stats for GA are tough to pin down, but a large 2009 study placed the adoption rate at about 28%. I’ve seen numbers as high as 40% being quoted, but it’s likely that somewhere around 2/3 of all sites don’t have GA data. It’s tough for Google to penalize or devalue a site based on a factor that only exists on 1/3 of all sites. Worse yet, some of the largest sites don’t have GA data, because those are the sites that can afford traditional, enterprise analytics (WebTrends, Omniture, etc.).

(2) GA Can Be Mis-installed

Even for sites using GA, Google can’t control how it’s installed. I can tell you from consulting and from Q&A here on SEOmoz that GA is often installed badly. This can elevate bounce rates, reduce time-on-site, and generally add a lot of noise to the system.

(3) GA Can Be Manipulated

Of course, there’s a malicious version of (2) – you can mis-install GA on purpose. There are ways to manipulate most user metrics, if you want to, and there’s no scalable way for Google to double-check everyone’s installation and setup. Once the GA tags are in your hands, they’ve lost a lot of control.

To be fair, others disagree and think that Google will use any data they can get their hands on. Some have even produced indirect evidence that bounce rate is in play. I’m going to argue a simple point - that Google and Bing don’t need analytics data or bounce rate. They have all the data they need from their own logs.

The 1 Reason I Don’t Buy

One argument you hear all the time is that Google can’t possibly use something like bounce rate as a ranking signal, because bounce rate is very site-dependent and unreliable by itself. I hear it so often that I wanted to take a moment to say that I don’t buy this argument, for one simple reason. ANY ranking signal, by itself, is unreliable. I don’t know a single SEO who would argue that TITLE tags don’t matter, for example, and yet TITLE tags are incredibly easy to manipulate. On-page factors in general can be spammed – that’s why Google added links to the mix. Links can be spammed – that’s why they’re adding social metrics and user metrics. With over 200 rankings factors (Bing claims over 1,000), no single factor has to be perfect.

Metric #1: SERP CTR

The first metric I think Google makes broad use of is direct Click-Through Rate (CTR) from the SERPs themselves. Whether or not a result gets clicked on is one of Google’s and Bing’s first clues about whether any given result is a good match to a query. We know Google and Bing both have this data, because they directly report it to us.

In Google Webmaster Tools, you can find CTR data under “Your site on the web” > “Search queries”. It looks something like this:

Bing reports similar data – from the “Dashboard”, click on “Traffic Summary”:

Of course, we also know that Google factors CTR heavily into their paid search quality score, and Bing has followed suit over the past year. While the paid search algorithm is very different from organic search, it stands to reason that they value CTR. Relevant results drive more clicks.

Metric #2: Dwell Time

Last year, Bing’s Duane Forrester wrote a post called “How to Build Quality Content”, and in it he referenced something called “dwell time”:

Your goal should be that when a visitor lands on your page, the content answers all of their needs, encouraging their next action to remain with you.  If your content does not encourage them to remain with you, they will leave.  The search engines can get a sense of this by watching the dwell time.  The time between when a user clicks on our search result and when they come back from your website tells a potential story.  A minute or two is good as it can easily indicate the visitor consumed your content.  Less than a couple of seconds can be viewed as a poor result.

Dwell time, in a sense, is an amalgam of bounce rate and time-on-site metrics – it measures how long it takes for someone to return to a SERP after clicking on a result (and it can be measured directly from the search engine’s own data).

Google hasn’t been quite so transparent, but there’s one piece of evidence that suggests strongly to me that they use dwell time as well (or something very similar). Last year, Google tested a feature where, if you clicked a listing and then quickly came back to the SERP (i.e. your dwell time was very low), you would get the option to block that site:

This feature isn’t currently available for all users – Google has temporarily scaled back site blocking with the launch of social personalization. The fact that low dwell time triggered the ability to block a site, though, clearly shows Google is factoring in dwell time as a quality signal.

1 + 2 = A Killer Combo

Where these 2 metrics really shine is as a duo. CTR by itself can easily be manipulated – you can drive up clicks with misleading titles and META descriptions that have little relevance to your landing page. That kind of manipulation will naturally lead to low dwell time, though. If you artificially drive up CTR and then your site doesn’t fulfill the promise of the snippet, people will go back to the SERPs. The combo of CTR and dwell time is much more powerful and, with just 2 metrics, removes a lot of quality issues. If you have both high CTR and high dwell time, you’re almost always going to have a quality, relevant result.

Do Other Metrics Matter?

I’m not suggesting that bounce rate and other user metrics don’t matter. As I said, dwell time is connected (and probably well correlated) to both bounce rate and time-on-site. Glenn Gabe had a nice post on “actual bounce rate” and why dwell time may represent an improvement over bounce rate. I’m also sticking to traditional user metrics from analytics and leaving out broader metrics, like site speed and social signals, which clearly tie into user behavior.

What I want you to do is to take a broader view of these user metrics, from the search engine’s perspective, and not get obsessed with the SEO impact of your analytics data. I’ve seen people removing and even manipulating GA tags lately, for fear of SEO issues, and what they usually end up doing is just destroying the reliability of their own data. I don’t think either Google or Bing are using direct analytics data, and even if they do down the road, they’ll probably combine that data with other factors.

So, What Should You Do?

You should create search snippets that drive clicks to relevant pages and build pages that make people stay on your site. At the end of the day, it sounds pretty obvious, and it’s good for both SEO and conversion. Specifically, think about the combo – driving clicks is useless (and probably even detrimental to SEO) if most of the people clicking immediately leave your site. Work to find the balance and to target relevant keywords that drive the right clicks.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

Microsoft Bing announced a new feature named Linked Pages. The purpose is to make the search results for you and your friends more personalized as well as richer. If I am friends with you and you do a search in Bing for [barry schwartz] you will see the following search result at the top: Linked... Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

Because I own my own company I know how hard it can be to continually bring in new clients and keep a steady flow of income. You have to have a plan for 6+ months down the road and offering workshops or classes might just help you. I believe a very important part of consulting [...]

Follow SEJ on Twitter @sejournal

Conversion testing is the holy grail of ROI on the Internet. Every day, more of our customers start picking up their phones, asking what new test we are planning for their website. Or may that be a result of sales people “incidentally” dropping Conversion Optimization and in doing so, providing the... Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

According to a recent New York Times article, Google is planning to launch technologically advanced glasses with a heads-up display later this year. The futuristic glasses, which will appear similar to Oakley Thumps sunglasses, will continually stream real-time information to the lenses using a 3G/4G connection. The project, which is being led by Google’s co-founder [...]

Follow SEJ on Twitter @sejournal

Due to the agile and complex nature of paid search, managing a paid search program can often degenerate into a constant barrage of fire drills and ad hoc report requests. I have been there and it is not fun. I have also found that there is a way to dig out of this chaos and [...] Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

Establishing a reputation for a business or brand online takes time and effort. Losing that good reputation, on the other hand, can happen in the blink of an eye. A switched-on business is aware of what is being said about their product or service and who is saying it, poised to step in and manage [...]

Follow SEJ on Twitter @sejournal

Google announced on the Google Webmaster Central blog that they are now adding video support for schema.org. They are doing this in combination with Microsoft Bing and Yahoo Search as a “joint effort.” Google says using the schema.org video markup is the “recommended way to... Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

Today is the 155th birthday of Heinrich Rudolf Hertz, the German physicist who was able to prove the existence of electromagnetic waves. To celebrate his contributions to the world, Google has a special animated wave logo on their homepage. He built an antenna that was able to detect and measure... Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

Google+ Pages have sparked a lot of discussion in B2B marketing circles. The ability to add multiple management functionality, site verification, and easy to integrate Google+ badges have leadership teams asking whether this truly is the next social media platform B2B marketers must focus upon.... Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

Many of the webinars this week offer basic techniques for the web programs or services the company provides. Raven Tools and SEOMoz both give in-depth webinars concerning their programs. For the hour it takes to watch, is well worth the time to try and figure the program out for yourself. Enjoy and learn something new [...]

Follow SEJ on Twitter @sejournal

Jordan Kasteler has had quite the career. He was the Senior SEO Analyst at Overstock.com, a co-founder of Search and Social, the SVP of Content Development / Managing Partner of BlueGlass Interactive, Inc. the CMO at Steelcast and is now the Online Marketing Strategist at PETA. Jordan is extremely smart and has built a very [...]

Follow SEJ on Twitter @sejournal

Google has been busy over the past couple of years acquiring a good number of small startups, including some that may help or have helped contribute features to Google Plus, such as Fridge, Tweet counting SocialGrapple, people sorting Katango, the team behind JustSpotted, social ranking PostRank, and social movie recommendation service fflick.

Google [...]

Posted by jennita

Conferences are always a great way to get out and meet the SEOmoz community. Luckily we have SMX West coming up next week and quite a few Mozzers will be attending, speaking, live blogging and tweeting. We want to get a chance to meet as many of you as possible so I forced everyone to decide on a schedule so you’ll know where to find us!

Before I get into talking about where we’ll be, it’s probably best to first introduce the Mozzers so you know who to look for.

Keri Morgret - @KeriMorgret

You all learned a bit about Keri a few weeks ago when we spilled the beans about the Community Team. In addition to all her great community work, she's also a freelance marketer and helps clients with both SEO and PPC. You will find her speaking on Wednesday at 3:30 pm on the Beyond the Google Adwords Tool: Advanced Keyword Research Tactics panel. She'll be talking about negative keywords and some ingenius ways to make sure you're not spending money on unnecessary keyword targeting. 

You'll also find her live blogging for http://www.seroundtable.com/. Catch her live blogging schedule below.

Michael King - @iPullRank

As an Associate for SEOmoz, Mike focuses on answering questions in Q&A and writing for the blog (you may have seen his epic post yesterday). He's also done a Whiteboard Friday (or two) and is a great contributor to the SEOmoz Community.

You'll find him all over SMX West this year! He'll be speaking on two panels: What Search Data Reveals About Customer Needs & Desires – And How To Use It,  and he'll be on the Link Building Clinic. Two panels you'll surely not want to miss!

One thing you may already know abut Mike is that he loves to get to know people, so if you see him walking by, say hi! I promise, he doesn't bite.

Everett Sizemore - @balibones

Another grand Associate, Everett helps out by answering Q&A and now and then I twist his arm to write for the blog. He’ll be speaking on the panel Driving Ecommerce & Retail Sales Through Search, Thursday at 1pm. If you saw his post about building deep links into e-commerce sites, then you know a bit how his mind works.

If you're working on an e-commerce or even just a really large site, I'd highly recommend not just going to this panel but also seeking Everett out in person. He's a ridiculous wealth of knowledge and we shouldn't let him keep all that inside. :)

 

 

Charlene Inoncillo - @charcillo

As our Marketing Admin, Charlene pretty much knows everything going on at all times on the marketing team. She’s new to the industry, so reach out and say hello! (ok, not literally).

She'll be attending all of the SMX Bootcamp sessions on the first day and in general learning all about search marketing. Be sure to stop her to say hello and show her how amazing this industry is!

 

 

Justin Vanning - @JustinVanning

Justin does Paid Search Marketing for Moz so you’ll probably see him spending much of his time in the PPC & Retargeting sessions. He'll be looking for ways to help out the SEOmoz Marketing team in addition to meeting our community.

Want to know more about our retargeting efforts, or how we do Facebook advertising? Justin's your man. Give him a holler and ask him about his Twitter strategy. ;)

 

 

 

Jen Sable Lopez - @jennita

*waves hello* If you haven't met me yet, I'm the Community Manager here at SEOmoz. I’ll be live-tweeting the heck out of SMX so be sure to watch out for my tweets from @jennita.

I'm hitting up a lot of the SEO and social media panels. I love to sit in the front row and make faces at the speakers, so beware! If you're not able to make to SMX follow my tweet stream and I'll attempt to keep you up-to-date.

If you're at the conference, please say hello! I love meeting our community members and really try to make it my goal to meet as many of you as possible.

Now that you know who you should be looking for, let’s see where all you can find us! Remember some of us are speaking, others are live blogging (or tweeting) and some of us are just attending. Also, we reserve the right to change our minds and attend different sessions as necessary. :D

Monday, February 27 – 6:00pm to 7:30pm

SMX Meet & Greet

Most of us will be attending the networking event on Monday night, so find us and say hello! We’re also planning on going for drinks after so let us know if you’d like to join us. :)

Tuesday, February 28

9:00am-10:15am SMX Boot Camp: Keyword Research & Copywriting For Search Success - Charlene Getting Personal, Part 1: How Google & Bing Personalize With Social Connections – Jen (live tweet) + Keri (live blog) Maximizing Paid Search Campaigns With Google’s AdWords Extensions - Justin

10:45am-12pm SMX Boot Camp: Link Building Fundamentals - Charlene Getting Personal, Part 2: How Google & Bing Personalize With Search History & Geography - Jen (live tweet)

1:30pm-2:45pm SMX Boot Camp: Paid Search Fundamentals - Charlene Solving Problems & Seeing Success In Google Places – Jen (live tweet) Power Tools For The Paid Search Pro - Justin

3:30pm-4:45pm SMX Boot Camp: Search Engine Friendly Web Design - Charlene Don’t Panic! A Hitchhiker’s Guide To Surviving SEO Changes – Jen (live tweet) + Keri (live blog) Retargeting & Remarketing: The New Behavioral Ads - Justin

Wednesday, February 29

10:45am-12pm SEO For Google+ & Google Search – Charlene + Jen (live tweet) Search Ads: Taking Your Ads From Good To Great! – Justin Real Answers For Technical SEO Problems – Mike (Q&A Moderating)

1:30pm-2:45pm Building Buzz On Twitter: Getting Followed & Retweeted – Charlene + Jen (live tweet) Best Practices For Paid Search Testing – Case Study Panel – Justin Schema.org, Rel=Author & Meta Tagging Best Practices – Keri (live blog)

3:30pm-4:45pm Building Buzz On Facebook: Getting Liked & Shared – Charlene + Jen (live tweet) Beyond The Google AdWords Tool: Advanced Keyword Research Tactics – Justin, Keri (speaking)

5:00pm-6:15pm Creative Facebook Ad Tactics - all of us will be there!

9pm-11pm: SMX After Dark @ Motif

Thursday, March 1

9am-10:15am The "New" Killer Content - Charlene Justifying The Investment: Analytics For Social Media  - Jen (live tweet) Maximizing Enterprise PPC ROI - Justin

10:45am-12pm Enterprise SEO – Challenges & Solutions - Charlene What Search Data Reveals About Customer Needs & Desires – And How To Use It – Jen (live tweet) + Justin + Keri (live blog) + Mike (speaking)

1pm-2:15pm Driving Ecommerce & Retail Sales Through Search – Everett (speaking) Link Building Clinic – Mike (speaking)

Say Hello!

I'm serious here. If I find out that you were at SMX and didn't say hello, I'm going to be sad. Just think if you find us, you may even get a lovely picture with some of us... like this:

See you at SMX!

PS. If you haven't bought your ticket yet, use the code smx10seomoz to get a discount when you register for SMX.

 

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

The mystery of Google’s stealth consumer product has apparently been conclusively solved. The NY Times is confirming earlier reports that Google is going to release “heads up display glasses” by the end of the year. The glasses — or literal Google Goggles in this case... Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

Google has been  improving its flight and hotel search results over the past few months, adding capabilities and polishing the overall experience. In accordance with that “iterative” approach Google announced today that flight search would be available on mobile devices through the... Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

Posted by randfish

I've been running an experiment with some dark-hatted links for several months, consistently hoping Google will catch them and remove their value. So far... Nothing. Well, except top 3 rankings for all the anchor text pointed at those pages. Google's webspam team has all the incentive, brainpower and money in the world, yet their bets seem to be centered firmly on Google+ and the social graph eventually subsuming the "natural" results with those biased to what our friends and connections share/+1. Fine. I get it. Link buying isn't going away, no matter how much we wish it would.

Even if link buying is working in the short-term and webspam's being less aggressive, I still think it's a waste of money for three reasons:

1. Rankings are tactical: Earning your way to the top rankings is awesome, because it brings with it the branding, familiarity, trust, social sharing and dozens of other positive marketing signals that "earned" links carry. Spam and paid links just give you some more traffic (and not even as much as a trusted brand could earn in the same position). Conversion rates are lower than your peers, and the secondary traffic benefits from other sources, word-of-mouth, etc. never come into play.
2. It's Overpriced: My wife's travel site gets offers for several hundred dollars to put in a few links on a single post, and that's not even an efficient market like those created by professional link sellers and link platforms. Playing the link buying game in the big leagues takes thousands to tens of thousands of dollars each month 
3. There's Always Risk: You're already familiar with the horrific pain of Google's Kafka-esque penalties, but maybe you're banking on not getting hit, given their relative ineffectiveness over the past couple years. Problem is, Google+ has created two new kinds of risk for link spammers. The first is that social search results, which have virtually no ties to the link graph, will overwhelm "natural" results and make those purchased links largely useless. The second is that Google+ gains enough momentum and data to leverage for webspam analysis. If you've been pointing lots of links at sites and pages that earn no social traction, get ready to feel some pain. Maybe you're risk-tolerant enough to scoff off both of these, but I don't think Google+ is going anywhere, and I give them even-odds to have a social content/sharing graph big enough to pull off both within 24 months.

"Blah, blah, blah, I've heard your white hat evangelism before, Rand" Yeah, you have. Fair enough. So how about instead of just warning about what not to do, I give you somewhere to spend all those earmarked-for-spam dollars.

Here's some rough calculations on link purchasing in a moderately competitive vertical:

• Ranking goal: single keyword phrase plus some slight modified phrases
• Required: minimum of 50 unique root domains
  • 35 will be one-time payments, but are relatively low quality, $100 is the average price (like I said, low quality)
  • 15 will require ongoing payments to maintain the link, $100/month (on average) will probably do it
• Total cost over 12 months: ($100*35)+($100*12*15) = $21,500

So, for $21,500, you can probably buy your way into the top 3 rankings for a moderately competitive phrase in a vertical like niche travel, low-volume e-commerce products, etc. Many black hats I know would argue they can get it cheaper, and they can, but that's usually because they own networks and properties or have relationships for which they wouldn't pay directly. A marketing guy working in-house at a brand has none of the connections, no networks of spamfarms, nothing except dollars and a business model that can turn $21.5K in spammy links into $100K in CLTV at 50% margins for a net of $28.5K.

Now let's try an alternative: Buying a blog.

Say you're LastWear Clothing (a site one of my favorite Moz engineers, Marty, particularly likes). They could buy some links to key pages (in spite of all the many good reasons not to) and try to get rankings for queries like men's hakama or womens underbust corset. There's a small amount of existing search query demand, and they're one of the only sources on the web selling those precise garments, so there's a good chance that would turn into sales.

But, let's try another thought experiment. I'll head over to Google Reader and run a search for "steampunk" (the aesthetic of LastWear's clothing):

The second site that pops up has a blog with 6,647 subscribers... And it's talking about the fashion of steampunk! I think we're on to something.

The Steampunk Workshop blog has thousands of subscribers, and they're already clear proponents of LastWear (I know, at this point you're thinking I planned all this from the start, but I swear, it just fell into place as I was searching/writing). That Workshop site is also running ads on the sidebar and between posts, which suggests an attempt at monetization. While not every site like this is a potential option, many are likely to be interested in an acquisition.

Here's one way I might structure it:

• Steampunk Workshop moves their blog to LastWear.com/blog
• They continue blogging about all the things they normally would - no editorial interference or direction needed
• LastWear helps with a more professional design, subscription buttons, some marketing polish, etc. to help the blog earn more traffic, visibility and fans
• In exchange for the move, LastWear offers a monthly stipend to the blogger(s) and a lump sum payment at the end of 3 years. After those 3 years, they own the blog and the content therein, and both parties can decide how they'd like to proceed with the relationship.

If LastWear went down this road, I can promise two things; #1) they'll get far greater short and long term ROI than buying links and #2) it will be less expensive in the long run.

To my mind, this is a no-brainer. When you buy a blog or any form of online community, you're not simply acquiring links, you're getting:

• An engine for brand building and indirect customer acquisition
• An ongoing methodology to pull in links, tweets, shares, +1s, likes, etc.
• Brand evangelists who will help expand your reach and credibility
• A PR opportunity like few others, even in fields where PR is hard to come by (acquisitions are talked-about, blogged-about, and make the news, even those of relatively small blogs)
• Content that's already been proven to attract an audience
• All the organic signals that search engines love to see - from links to social to usage to content to branding

I honestly don't understand why this problem exists:

It makes you want to yell, "Why don't you just go get married already?!"

Here's five questions I'd ask brands considering online marketing to answer before choosing link purchasing tactics over a blog investment strategy:

1. Which is more likely to be scalable in the long term?
2. Which is more likely to work across multiple channels (content, social, SEO, referring links, etc)?
3. Which carries a greater risk->reward ratio?
4. Which is more likely to increase conversion rate and customer lifetime value?
5. Which is more likely to earn you accolades from your community and which is more likely to earn you a rankings penalty one morning when you really need to hit your quarterly traffic numbers? 

To be fair, there's plenty of challenges and hoops to jump through in these types of transactions and some won't work out. But, I see a huge disconnect between those who are naturally earning all the signals engines say they want (blogs and online communities) vs. those need them (commercial sites) and no reason the two can't co-mingle. If you're a marketer looking to invest dollars into earning a presence in the search, social and web world, you can either build it yourself or you can buy it. I hope to see lots of dollars flowing to the content pioneers who've already proven themselves effective earners of inbound marketing signals -- the bloggers.

p.s. In the future, I hope to cover this topic in more depth and detail and provide tools and methodologies to structure discovery, transactions, value-creation, etc. but for now, I hope this post offers at least a little inspiration and an alternative use for capitol that can do far more good in the hands of bloggers than fly-by-night spam operations.

Sign up for The Moz Top 10, a semimonthly mailer updating you on the top ten hottest pieces of SEO news, tips, and rad links uncovered by the Moz team. Think of it as your exclusive digest of stuff you don't have time to hunt down but want to read!

Below is what happened in search today, as reported on Search Engine Land and from other places across the web. From Search Engine Land: Scroogle’s Gone? Here’s Who Still Offers Private Searching You’ve probably read the news already that Scroogle is gone forever. It launched back... Please visit Search Engine Land for the full article.

Webmaster level: All Videos are one of the most common types of results on Google and we want to make sure that your videos get indexed. Today, we're also launching video support for schema.org. Schema.org is a joint effort between Google, Microsoft and Yahoo! and is now the recommended way to describe videos on the web. The markup is very simple and can be easily added to most websites. Adding schema.org video markup is just like adding any other schema.org data. Simply define an itemscope, an itemtype=”http://schema.org/VideoObject”, and make sure to set the name, description, and thumbnailURL properties. You’ll also need either the embedURL — the location of the video player — or the contentURL — the location of the video file. A typical video player with markup might look like this: <div itemscope itemtype="http://schema.org/VideoObject">   <h2>Video: <span itemprop="name">Title</span></h2>   <meta itemprop="duration" content="T1M33S" />   <meta itemprop="thumbnailURL" content="thumbnail.jpg" />   <meta itemprop="embedURL"     content="http://www.example.com/videoplayer.swf?video=123" />   <object ...>     <embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" ...>   </object>   <span itemprop="description">Video description</span> <div> Using schema.org markup will not affect any Video Sitemaps or mRSS feeds you're already using. In fact, we still recommend that you also use a Video Sitemap because it alerts us of any new or updated videos faster and provides advanced functionality such as country and platform restrictions. Since this means that there are now a number of ways to tell Google about your videos, choosing the right format can seem difficult. In order to make the video indexing process as easy as possible, we’ve put together a series of videos and articles about video indexing in our new Webmasters EDU microsite. For more information, you can go through the Webmasters EDU video articles, read the full schema.org VideoObject specification, or ask questions in the Webmaster Help Forum. We look forward to seeing more of your video content in Google Search. Posted by Henry Zhang, Product Manager