What happened? I used to be able to post any link from my youtube.com video to ANY URL I pleased. It is still possible! Here is the trick. The process is similar, it has been legitimized bit.
Associated Website annotations provide site owners a way to link to their websites directly from their videos. To enable Website Annotations please make sure that your account fulfills these requirements.
- Your account is verified. You can verify your account in youtube.com/verify
- Your account needs to be in Good Standing. You can check if your channel meets this criteria on the YouTube Settings/Features page.
Create an Associated Website Annotation
Associate a website to your YouTube Account
To create an Associated Website annotation, first you need to complete these steps:
- Make sure your account is verified and in good standing before adding an associated website. You can verify your account in youtube.com/verify
- Add your website as an associate website in the Webmaster Tools. This will allow you to confirm that you own the site before you link it to your YouTube account.
- Include this website as the “Associated Website” in your YouTube account. Visit your Advanced Channel Settings and add the information in the “Associated website” section.
Once you have associated your main webpage to your YouTube account, you can associate more websites through the Webmaster Tools. You will be able to link your annotations to any of these domains. Learn more about adding more associated websites to your Google Account.
Add an Associated Website annotation
Now, you can enable Associated Website annotations and add them in your videos. Here is how:
- From your Video Manager, click the down arrow next to the “Edit” button of the video you want to change, then click Annotations.
- If this is the first time you’re using external annotations, at the top of the menu you’ll see a banner that says “Enable your account for external annotation links.” Click the Enable button and accept the Terms and Conditions.
- Once you’ve accepted the Terms and Conditions, click the Add annotation button to create a new annotation, or select an existing annotation. Select the “Link” checkbox to add a URL, then select the category Associated Website.
- When you’ve placed your associated website link and have finished editing your annotation, select Save and/or Publish.
When both sides have finished this process, you will see “Success” on the account associated website page.
Please note that video playback stops when a viewer clicks an annotation in your video, which can impact your watch time metrics.
From: Google.com