Google Wants to Tag TV

Details

Published on Sunday, 10 April 2011 19:55

According to Google, it's time to start tagging TV shows. And this could not only be useful for meta in terms of search, but also for allowing 3rd party developers to develop apps on multiplatform devices, such as Smart Phones and Tablets. How? Imagine if all TV shows and films had an XML format which not only tagged basic things such as the series titble, season, episode number etc, but also allowed for setting triggers in a timeline which would allow for developers to create more compelling second screen, multiplatform experiences.

It's a start... and now Youtube supports additional fields in both video Sitemaps and mRSS feeds where one can specify metadata specific to television or episodic content. This includes the series’ title, the season and episode numbers for the video in question, the premiere date, as well as other additional information. The metadata from your video feed helps provide more detailed, relevant results to users wanting to view your show.

“The metadata from your video feed helps us provide more detailed, relevant results to users wanting to view your show,” Google wrote March 24 on its blog.

Google’s video tag fields call for the series’ title, the episode title, the season premiere date, and episode numbers. Another field allows for entry of video type, so episode promos, clips and interviews can be identified along with the primary video. It would also be interesting to see this develop into a full fledged XML in order to identify triggers for multiplatform use in the timeline, such as product placement, quizzes, predictions, tCommerce, social gaming and more.

The full documentation for the tags for both mRSS and Video Sitemaps can be found in the Webmaster Tools Help Center.