Exactly how rare are golden snowmen, and is snowmen placement random or fixed?

They used to be very rare, I remember spending days last 2 Xmases looking for them. This time though I jumped on and found a golden one and a regular one side by side. You get 5000XP (see vid)

There is only ever 1 golden snowman on a continent at a time. When it is destroyed it respawns somewhere else. The spawn locations for all snowmen are fixed, but there are a lot of locations, and snowmen randomly spawn at each location. So it looks random, but after a while you will start to notice them popping up in the same place over and over. When a snowman is destroyed it respawns elsewhere.

The spawn locations do not change year to year, so maps from previous years are still valid. The best way to get snowmen is to get yourself locked on esamir after the continent is locked, use a fighter and go as an engineer because your fighter will run out of ammo eventually, and you'll need to land and get out and shoot the snowmen with your machine gun. Unless your faction owns the continent, of course.