EchoVideo now allows public media links to be indexed by the sites where 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.

The site must already be set up to index video links in order to provide previews and searchability. EchoVideo is simply providing the necessary metadata for the site to function.

What Does Indexing Do

Indexing public media links does two things.

First, it allows for a preview of the link to be displayed on the site, rather than just a link. Typically, you would need to embed the link within a frame to display a preview or to 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 on the site.

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

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 on the Media Details page, in the Links section of the Info tab.

To allow indexing of public media links

1. Log in to 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 appear, and Basic Info is selected by default.

4. Click Features from the middle panel.

5. Scroll down to the Public Links and Embeddable Player links section of the page, shown in the figure below.

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

   

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

If toggled on, 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>