EchoVideo now provides the ability for public media links to be indexable by the sites into which they are posted. This can include social media sites such as LinkedIn, Twitter, Google, or Facebook, as well as your university website or other sites configured to index media links.

NOTE that the site must already be set up to index video links, in order to provide the preview and searchability. EchoVideo is simply providing the metadata necessary for the site to do so.

What does Indexing do

Indexing public media links does two things - if the receiving site is set up to index video links:

First, it allows for a preview of the link to be displayed on the site, rather than just a link. Typically you would have to embed the link into a frame in order to show a preview, or play back the media directly on the site. With indexing, the link is automatically converted into a small playable preview panel, allowing users to view the media within the site itself.

Second, it allows the media to be "indexed" by site (and browser) search engines so that users can FIND the media more easily.

Note that Indexing can ONLY apply to PUBLIC media links. This means the link needs to be created without requiring authentication. Or in other words, the "Public access" toggle must be turned on for the link (it is on by default when the link is created).

Media links are created in either the Share dialog box via the Links tab, or in the Media Details page, in the Links section of the Info tab.

To allow indexing of public media links

1. Log into EchoVideo as an administrator.
2. Click the Settings icon in the upper-right corner of the screen.
3. From the Settings menu, select Institution Settings.

   General settings appears and Basic Info is selected by default.

4. Select Features.
5. Scroll down to the Public Links and Embeddable player links section of the page, shown in the below figure.
   

   There are three toggles in this section. Two of them determine whether users can create public links to media, and are discussed Enable or Disable Public Links to EchoVideo Media. This article discusses the toggle for allowing indexing of links by external sites.

   
6. Toggle the Allow Indexing of Public Links option on or off as appropriate. When enabled, external sites that index media links can index EchoVideo links to provide media previews and entries for search engines.

If enabled, the one change you will see is that the URLs for public media links are slightly different.

Links that do not allow indexing have the following construction:

https://<echo360url>/media/<publicLinkId>/public

Links that DO allow indexing have the following construction:

https://<echo360url>/public/media/<publicLinkId>