Google Search Console says that of 482K crawled file description pages for videos, only 74 are indexed as videos. Indexing almost always fails with the error message "Video isn't on a watch page".
The linked documentation says:
The video doesn't seem to be on a watch page. A watch page's main purpose is to show a user a single video; only videos that are on a watch page are eligible for indexing. Here are some examples of page types where the video is supplementary to the textual content, and not a watch page:
- A blog post where the video is complementary to the text rather than the primary content of the page
- A product details page with a complementary video
- A video category page that lists multiple videos of equal prominence
For more details, learn how to create a dedicated watch page.
If you're sure your page is designed to focus on a single video, use the URL inspection tool to check to make sure the video is showing up in the rendered HTML. Try moving the video container to a higher position in the HTML.
If you’re using a paywall, add structured data for paywalled content to prevent crawl issues.
I inspected a few of the 74 indexed videos, but they seem unremarkable. Like other Commons videos, they abuse the hProduct microformat and so Google detects them as product pages. Like other Commons videos, Google detects two videos on each page, because the file history thumbnail counts as a video. Some have non-canonical URLs, despite the rel=canonical tag being present in the crawled HTML. Some of them are not even videos, like this image of an S-Video socket.
Solutions can be tested on a separate domain, there's no indication that Google is treating Commons specially.
More specific docs:
- https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/video
- https://developers.google.com/search/docs/appearance/structured-data/video#video-object
- https://developers.google.com/search/docs/crawling-indexing/sitemaps/video-sitemaps
- https://ogp.me/#type_video
Tests on people.wikimedia.org:
| File | Description | Watch page? |
|---|---|---|
| rendered.html | post-load outerHTML of File:Wikipedia User Name MEDIUM.ogv with some resource locations adjusted | No |
| strip-filetoc.html | As above with filetoc box removed | No |
| strip-namespaces.html | As above with all tabs removed | No |
| strip-header.html | As above with search bar etc. removed | No |
| rich.html | rendered.html with valid JSON-LD VideoObject | No |
| source.html | As above but <video> has <source> | No |
| rs-strip-extreme.html | As above with almost all content and navigation removed | Yes |
| strip-extreme.html | As above without <source> | Yes |
| strip-content.html | rendered.html with content area heavily stripped, nav areas intact | No |