These are the suggested videos that popped up after one of my videos at the time of this post. Why would I want the distraction?
It never fails. I’m watching a Youtube video about an innocent subject that I want to learn more about. Or worse, I’m watching a video with one of my kids. The video ends and wham-o… we’ve got flesh, gore, fear, or commercialism popping up as “suggestions” from Youtube.
As a parent, I detest this. As a teacher, I needed to lock it down. Now as a business owner, I don’t want to be associated with many of those things, but more importantly, I don’t want my viewers attention dragged away on a wild Youtube goose chase.
When I send my pro videos off to my clients, I always tell them to embed them with the suggested videos turned off. The key is in the little code “?rel=0” It gives you this when you click on embed and uncheck “show suggested videos…” You just never know what will show up in those. I don’t want some/most of that stuff on my website.
Directions
Go to the native Youtube display page for the video. (the standard page for just your video)
- Click on the Share tab
- Click on Embed tab
- Uncheck box for “Show suggested videos when the video finishes”
- Copy and paste the code where you need it on your site.
- Sometimes these three choices do not appear. In that case, you can just copy and paste the URL, then add the code “?rel=0” to the end of your video URL where you embed it on your page.
Here is an annotated screenshot to help make it clear.
4 steps to avoiding related videos on a Youtube embed
If you are comfortable fiddling with the URL, all you really need is to add “?rel=0” to the end of the URL.
The main thing is that after your video, you want your website visitors thinking about your call to action, not the next thing Youtube serves up for them.
Here is a link to an extensive YouTube embedded players help page that goes into much more detail on this and other options for YouTube embeds. Thank you Paul Clifford of Trinity Digital Media for bringing this to my attention!
Questions? Comments? Please offer your input below.
