On August 6, 2022, Google will no longer support some video and image sitemap extension tags. Gary Illyes from Google said it is removing support for those sitemap extension tags to simplify sitemap extensions and to help “reduce complexity of your codebases” by making sitemaps “less cluttered in general.”

What is being removed. The following sitemap extension tags are no longer going to be supported:

Within image sitemaps:

• caption
• geo_location
• title
• license

Within video sitemaps:

• category
• player_loc[@allow_embed]
• player_loc[@autoplay]
• gallery_loc, price[@all]
• tvshow[@all]

August 6, 2022. Google said the “deprecated tags will have no effect on indexing and search features after August 6, 2022.”

This does not mean you need to race to remove these tags or attributes from your video or image sitemaps. Google said “there’s no immediate action required; you can leave these tags and attributes in place without drawbacks.”

Search Console notifications. Google did add that sometime in the future, if you still have these tags or attributes in those sitemap files, Google may notify you that they have been deprecated via messages or errors in Search Console. “the future, Search Console may show warnings once these updates are included in the next schema versions of the Image and Video extensions,” Google added.

Why we care. If you use these tags or attributes in your video or image sitemaps, you should be aware that they will no longer be supported in about a month. You should also expect notifications of this via Google Search Console. But no rush on making changes – keeping them should not negatively impact your site’s performance in Google Search.