Google Video Doing 302 Redirects

[Mikkel deMib Svendsen]

I have just been testing the new Google Video and uploaded my first test-video about a week ago. Finally it came online today

You can add a whole bunch of information, including a full transcript if you like, for each video and also a URL to your website. So off course I did that - especially the URL.

You can find the final Google Video page for my (test) video here (the video is a song I taped at a reception for a local artist I work with - nothing special, just for testngs).

The link just below the "About this show" point to the website of the artist (as I added under the video information settings for this video. However, the link is not a direct link but a redirect - and not only that, it's a 302!

Off course, the video page, with my video, is not indexed by Google (web search) yet but given the fact that the artist most likely want to link to it it is very likely that this page will in fact get indexed by Google (they index their own search results all the time - if there are links to them).

We have all seen the results of 302 redirecting in the past year or two - and the problems dosen't seem to be over yet (especially not in Google). I am not sure I am so happy about this 302 from Google. With Googles high PR I am simply affraid that they will end up hijacking the sites I point to from the videos I upload and the question is, do I really want to add videos without any reference to my (or the artists) site?


We really need one of the GoogleReps to step in here and let us when that stupid 302 will be removed. If Google will not do that I am not sure I want to add more videos and I think it will also be appropriate to warn others not to do so - or, at least, not to add their URL.

What do you think of it?

[Chris_D]

http://video.google.com/robots.txt

User-agent: *
Disallow: /videosearch?
Disallow: /videopreview?
Disallow: /videoprograminfo?
Disallow: /videolineup

[Mikkel deMib Svendsen]

Yes, but that robots.txt does not block the page I posted above (videopreviewbig) - with the 302 link back to the artists website. And as you can see from this search Google are already beginign to index more of them. And as you can see the link to this guy's website is indeed a 302.


So, it does indeed look like you get a 302 as a special move in "gift" when you use the Video Upload (u nless, that is, you simply don't add your URL - but then, why would you upload the video ...?)

[Chris_D]

Yes, but that robots.txt does not block the page I posted above (videopreviewbig)

Exactly why I posted the contents of the robots.txt file. Maybe a Google person will drop by & notice that they haven't excluded 'videopreviewbig?'

[Mikkel deMib Svendsen]

I just realized that not only do Google use 302's on Video Upload - they also do that on the AdSense for Parked Domain program (that by the way, they did not tell the advertisers they would suddenly get included in!). And not only that - they use 3 nested 302's on the parked domain!

What are they thinking!?

I guess we all know how bad a 302 redirect can be for you - and how much worse it gets if you add several 302's in a row.