

Ask HN: Why is youtube search so poor? - WorldMover


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jcr
The first question is, "How are you searching for video?"

If you're using a general engine, or even the built-into-site search box of
youtube, then your results will be typically poor. The trouble is most of the
available types of searches are trying to determine what you mean, rather than
keeping things simple and returning results based on a pattern match. Video
searching is one of the places where the "what you mean" interpretation yields
very poor results.

Additionally, you can use specific "video search" features of general search
engines and receive better results than if you used a "built-into-site" search
box.

Here's the "quick-link" I use for google video searching in firefox. It's
saved as a bookmark, and in the "properties" dialog for the link, I set the
"keyword" value to "gv". This means I just type "gv whatever" in the
URL/Address bar, and get the desired video search results.

[https://encrypted.google.com/search?num=100&safe=off&...](https://encrypted.google.com/search?num=100&safe=off&sa=G&ie=UTF-8&prmd=ivns&source=univ&tbs=vid:1&tbo=u&q=%s)

For example: "gv knuth"

[https://encrypted.google.com/search?num=100&safe=off&...](https://encrypted.google.com/search?num=100&safe=off&sa=G&ie=UTF-8&prmd=ivns&source=univ&tbs=vid:1&tbo=u&q=knuth)

Yes, I have different "keywords" set for all the major types of searches I do,
and this enables me to get rid of the "Search Box" in the browser.

