[HN Gopher] To improve search results on YouTube, use the search...
___________________________________________________________________
 
To improve search results on YouTube, use the search prefix
"intitle:"
 
Author : normhill
Score  : 148 points
Date   : 2022-07-05 16:10 UTC (6 hours ago)
 
web link (xn--1-zfa.com)
w3m dump (xn--1-zfa.com)
 
| Tijdreiziger wrote:
| Meta: It seems that HN lists the Punycode for this website's
| domain (xn--1-zfa.com), instead of the actual IDN that's
| displayed by the browser (a1.com). This feels kind of odd to me.
| 
| [Punycode] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punycode
| 
| [IDN] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internationalized_domain_name
 
  | asciiresort wrote:
  | It poses a security risk and exploited to phish people.
  | 
  | Modern Browsers sanitize punycode, not so sure about bespoke
  | browsers that live inside other mobile apps
 
  | INTPenis wrote:
  | Depends on your view. People who wotk with DNS want to see the
  | actual domain, while end users might prefer the translation.
 
    | teddyh wrote:
    | People who work with DNS know how to right-click and do "Copy
    | Link", or even to hover over a link and watch the status bar
    | text.
 
    | Tijdreiziger wrote:
    | Well, HN is a link aggregator, not a DNS tool.
 
| random314 wrote:
| The top results are typically copies of the original video you
| searched for, with padding to increase length of the video.
 
| slig wrote:
| YouTube's search is horrible. No, I don't want "related results"
| that are completely unrelated to my query, neither results from
| my country when I specifically type in English and my whole UI is
| in English and I never watch non-English content while logged in.
 
  | judge2020 wrote:
  | > neither results from my country
  | 
  | Might be related to some local law or simply pressure from
  | lawmakers, eg Canada is experimenting with such a law:
  | https://www.medianama.com/2022/06/223-canada-bill-streaming-...
 
  | kmfrk wrote:
  | One of the craziest things about YouTube search I don't
  | understand is how you'll search for the name of someone, and
  | their channel won't show up in the first results. Sometimes,
  | often really, it won't show up at all, and you'll have to
  | figure out other ways to phrase your queries. You kind of need
  | to go with a long channel name that can be abbreviated like
  | "Bob65's Engineering tricks", so people have the full name as a
  | fallback, in case "bob65" doesn't work.
  | 
  | Feels like they really want you to subscribe and engage with
  | the "related" videos instead of the real deal, which sucks for
  | channel owners, especially if it's channels who profit on being
  | weirdly intrusive and hostile towards said channels or people.
 
  | davisoneee wrote:
  | Firefox plugin to remove distracting crap[2] such as 'related
  | results' on search pages.
  | 
  | [2]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/youtube-
  | recom...
 
    | arkitaip wrote:
    | If you use uBlock Origin you can remove most cruft by adding
    | these rules to Settings > My filters:
    | youtube.com##.ytp-ce-element       youtube.com###hover-
    | overlays       youtube.com##yt-icon.ytd-badge-supported-
    | renderer       youtube.com###related
    | youtube.com###donation-shelf
 
    | dmix wrote:
    | Thanks I tried it out and the setting is called "Hide Inapt
    | Search Results" (it's on by default but it also disables
    | recommendations everywhere by default so you might need to
    | disable the other options).
 
  | bdowling wrote:
  | YouTube's search is carefully optimized to keep viewers
  | watching video after video, and ad after ad, for as long as
  | possible. That's why the search returns popular videos, ones
  | that suck in viewers, rather than ones that match your search
  | terms.
 
    | mgdlbp wrote:
    | At least the algorithm isn't totally amnesic; no other site
    | remembers that content can have enduring relevance.
 
    | doliveira wrote:
    | I'm actually finding myself watching YouTube less and less
    | because of this. If we were to anthropomorphize the AI, I'd
    | say it's trying pretty desperately to bring me to a "popular
    | cluster".
 
      | danuker wrote:
      | So do I. The only way I "get" content lately is to see what
      | my subscriptions are up to. Search is effectively
      | impossible.
      | 
      | They might have a minus sign somewhere it shouldn't be.
 
      | Beltalowda wrote:
      | In my experience, its significantly more aggressive at this
      | than it used to be. The only reason I have a Google/YouTube
      | account in the first place is so I can go to youtube.com
      | and see a list of reasonable interesting videos to watch,
      | based on what I watched before. But in the last few months
      | it keeps pushing more and more "popular" content in there,
      | which is often complete drivel IMHO. I don't even mind if
      | YouTube would show unrelated content, as long as it's
      | interesting, but usually it's not. The entire reason
      | YouTube wins out over regular TV is so I can avoid this
      | kind of stuff.
      | 
      | I've been flagging these things as "not interested" for
      | months now, but it feels like fighting windmills because it
      | has no discernible effect. The effect of all of this is
      | that YouTube is a lot less useful to me than it used to be.
 
        | jjoonathan wrote:
        | Last week youtube decided to start pushing pus / pimple
        | popping videos, and push them hard. I've never shown
        | interest, this was purely the algorithm's idea.
        | 
        | Gross.
        | 
        | I had to install an extension to get it to stop because
        | "Not Interested" and "Don't Recommend Channel" don't work
        | in search results, even though they are turning search
        | results into just another front page :/
 
        | TaylorAlexander wrote:
        | I feel the same way. YouTube is by far my primary
        | streaming platform of any kind (audio or video) and
        | recently the algorithm's obsession with click bait is
        | making it way less useful to me. This is leading me to
        | watch Nebula and listen to podcasts a lot more. A couple
        | of months ago I noticed a rapid change in the YouTube
        | home page results. There is a channel I watch that
        | uploads four videos or so every day and I always watch
        | every single one immediately. Normally when I open the
        | home page the latest video from that channel is at the
        | very top of the list, and I usually click on it. Then one
        | day it just wasn't! The channel was continuing to upload
        | and grow in size but the algorithm decided to throw all
        | kinds of low quality stuff at me, to the point I felt
        | like I had been logged out even when I wasn't. I
        | complained to YouTube on twitter and I don't know what
        | happened but after about five days of this nonsense
        | things returned to normal, but then began to slowly
        | degrade again. It felt like I had been A/B tested for a
        | new change which then got pulled back and made more
        | subtle. But it is still a bad change!
        | 
        | I don't know what they're optimizing for but it certainly
        | isn't my enjoyment.
 
        | daniel-cussen wrote:
        | I don't watch interesting videos anymore.
        | 
        | Too interesting, too holy shit wow can't believe that,
        | wow. Like sometimes an EE thing yes, then it makes sense,
        | basically a guy talking about an oscilloscope or
        | television then it's part of the show to use a television
        | to talk about it. And only when they link to it
        | externally.
        | 
        | But interesting for its own sake? Rather talk to the men
        | on the street, those guys are interesting, have great
        | stories.
 
      | WASDx wrote:
      | You're the exception. They naturally do A/B testing and are
      | data-driven to optimize for said objectives.
 
        | doliveira wrote:
        | Yeah, I know, line goes up when taking the population
        | average. Must even point in the direction of ads watchers
        | and clickers. Taking into account the shitty videos this
        | cost function promotes, I honestly get a little proud of
        | this algorithm not working for me.
        | 
        | Would be nice for us to have a little more control and
        | transparency over where the AI is taking us, though,
        | specially for us YouTube Premium payers.
 
        | hamandcheese wrote:
        | I'm sure if YouTube PMs could they would mail you cocaine
        | if it made you watch enough ads.
 
    | jjoonathan wrote:
    | > The goals of the advertising business model do not always
    | correspond to providing quality search to users.
    | 
    | -Sergey Brin and Lawrence Page, The Anatomy of a Large-Scale
    | Hypertextual Web Search Engine
 
  | causi wrote:
  | Don't forget how you get five or six results from your search
  | term before it starts listing random videos like it has ADHD.
 
    | maest wrote:
    | I'm sure the YT PMs have proof that this improves engagement.
    | 
    | On a similar note, I've started noticing the third video in
    | the "related videos" section on the right-hand sidebar is
    | usually a new video with _extremely_ clickbait and
    | inflammatory titles - sometimes with little connection to the
    | topics I usually watch.
    | 
    | They're extremely distracting so I've set up a uBlock filter
    | for these: `www.youtube.com##ytd-compact-video-renderer.ytd-
    | item-section-renderer.style-scope:nth-of-type(3)`
    | 
    | This doesn't work 100% of the time, but it's good enough. (in
    | particular, it fails if what I'm watching is a trailer video
    | which makes the 2nd recommendation in the sidebar be a movie
    | recommendation which doesn't fit this rule; as a result it
    | blocks the 4th entry in the list, but oh well)
 
      | ipaddr wrote:
      | Until this changes to the 4th or 2nd
 
      | ithinkso wrote:
      | > I'm sure the YT PMs have proof that this improves
      | engagement.
      | 
      | I sometimes wonder if the opposite is true - that the PMs
      | can convince the upper managment that users are staying on
      | the website longer with all those stupid as fuck shit
      | changes, but in reality they are there longer because it's
      | increasingly more difficult to find anything you are
      | looking for
      | 
      | Sort of 'When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a
      | good measure'
 
      | MWil wrote:
      | Reminds me of that scene from The Office (US) where Phyllis
      | is calling 411 to inquire about anti-gravity machines and
      | they ask if she'll settle for...
      | 
      | well just watch...
      | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZG1NeA3WoKc
 
  | winternett wrote:
  | YouTube's KPIs for promoting videos are totally off base in my
  | opinion. They use click through rates and watch time as key
  | indicators, which can easily be manipulated by bots, which is
  | pretty obvious now as rampant on the platform with popular
  | videos showing millions and billions of views, while the
  | majority of posts (from small creators only get 100 or less
  | views over years on the platform.
  | 
  | On YouTube, you get thrown in a trash bin unless you're able to
  | pay or generate traffic from popularity elsewhere.
  | 
  | YT also puts too much emphasis on post titles now, many posters
  | outright clone titles, which in turn botches search results
  | massively. It was a terrible decision YT made to deprioritize
  | taxonomy (hash tags) years ago in order to reduce moderation
  | staff-- Of which, if taxonomy actually worked, feedback could
  | better identify inaccurate and mis-leading content when
  | compared to thumbs down rates... The options for video result
  | sorting have been terribly limited and almost useless as well
  | for ages now.
  | 
  | A big conflict of interest is that YouTube sells and promotes
  | ad-based content boosting to creators, which contradicting-ly
  | makes them more geared towards promoting content that falls
  | under this (paid promotional) category first. It also drives
  | YouTube to lower organic reach for users to drive them towards
  | paying for promotion more year over year... That also
  | encourages the platform to subvert organically good/upvoted
  | content. YT can't logically sell the idea that organic growth
  | is a possibility any more citing the underlying fact that they
  | feature paid promotion without labeling every promoted item of
  | that content as such, it's shocking how they get away with this
  | contradiction of authenticity regularly.
  | 
  | The older engagement methods were far better for YouTube's
  | content quality and authenticity. Now too many users are driven
  | to post repetitive and dragged out videos, with titles based on
  | trends, with decreasing originality and substance.
  | 
  | The current YouTube/TikTok success model is training everyone
  | to conform to a single theme and format, encouraging idea,
  | topic, and content cloning, and into repeating and simply
  | reacting to what popular channels do.
  | 
  | YouTube content will all only continue to get worse and more
  | monotonous if the same ideals on paid promotion continue, and
  | creator success/profit will continue to shrink. (Just my
  | opinion of course).
 
    | jsemrau wrote:
    | > (from small creators only get 100 or less views over years
    | on the platform.
    | 
    | finclout is trying to address this by providing a more
    | effective means of monetization for smaller creators in the
    | financial services space. There are great insights coming
    | from this group by they are getting drowned out by the
    | algorithm of Youtube (as you correctly stated)
 
      | [deleted]
 
      | samb1729 wrote:
      | Please disclose the fact that finclout is a product you are
      | invested in when advertising it on here.
 
        | jsemrau wrote:
        | The irony is that this is exactly the problem of current
        | social media. Everyone can comment on everything in any
        | way they like and there is no way to validate their
        | affiliations, intentions, or sponsorships on scale.
 
  | hawski wrote:
  | At the same time when I want to find a song it often is enough
  | to somewhat be phonetically in the realms of song's text or
  | mention a characteristic object from the video clip if I saw it
  | and it will often be the first result.
 
| toxik wrote:
| Is it possible to build a third party YouTube search by scraping
| a) YouTube and b) the user's watch history?
| 
| To me it seems like there's some mid-to-low hanging fruit there.
| YT's recommender fails to understand when a video is part of a
| series so often I almost have to think it's intentional. Also
| recommending videos I've already watched in my homepage feed?
| What?
| 
| What bugs me the most is that it wasn't always this bad. Somebody
| changed it a couple of years ago.
 
  | mbirth wrote:
  | Invidious was such project, IIRC.
 
  | mtoner23 wrote:
  | Certaily gotta be against youtube's TOS and it'll get shut down
 
    | [deleted]
 
| post_break wrote:
| All I want is to be able to remove channels from my search,
| similar to removing pinterest from Google search.
 
  | causi wrote:
  | Being able to subscribe to specific playlists and keep specific
  | playlists from your subscriptions would be wondrous. There's a
  | ton of channels I'd like to subscribe to but they just pollute
  | my Subscriptions page too much.
 
    | wsostt wrote:
    | You can add a playlist to your library and it will show up in
    | the Playlists section. Navigate to the playlist and look for
    | an icon with throw horizontal lines and a check mark.
 
  | timbit42 wrote:
  | BlockTube removes videos based on words in titles and channel
  | names: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-
  | US/firefox/addon/blocktube/
 
  | normhill wrote:
  | I just checked this works -"channel name" (it only works if the
  | channel name is in quotes)
 
    | post_break wrote:
    | I'll have to try it, I need it on the mobile app.
 
  | savanaly wrote:
  | It's not directly available in search but from the home page
  | you can click the triple dot menu and click Don't recommend
  | channel.
 
    | post_break wrote:
    | That doesn't remove a channel from search unfortunately.
 
  | davisoneee wrote:
  | For firefox users:
  | 
  | Extension [1] gives a little 'X' beside the channel name in
  | home and search, that can be used to completely remove that
  | channel from all future searches.
  | 
  | Similarly, remove a bunch of random distracting crap[2] such as
  | 'related results'.
  | 
  | [1]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/youtube-
  | clean...
  | 
  | [2]: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-GB/firefox/addon/youtube-
  | recom...
 
| onetokeoverthe wrote:
 
| jsemrau wrote:
| That's reallyhelpful. I am building youtube integration right now
| and noticed how the search results are really weird.
 
| xnx wrote:
| In most cases, I'll take YouTube's default ranking, which might
| incorporate captioned text, comments, and other signals. Good to
| have this search operator as an option for specific uses.
 
| firebaze wrote:
| Brave search. Search for brave search, and you're back to when
| google was good.
| 
| https://search.brave.com/
| 
| (Not affiliated with brave at all, just really impressed by their
| search engine)
 
| Llamamoe wrote:
| This is brilliant. I can't believe I haven't thought of it.
| 
| I also recommend Distraction Free YouTube for blocking
| recommendations and (optionally) comments.
 
| AlecSchueler wrote:
| This is great.
| 
| Lately I've been learning to play traditional Irish music. Often
| I'll want to hear as many versions of a tune as I can; don't care
| if it's studio musicians, a session at a bar, or a few mates in
| their kitchen, as long as it includes the specified tune.
| 
| What will often happen if I search, for example, "Monaghan Jig,"
| is that I'll get a few results from famous albums and
| professional YouTube content creators, then a bunch of other
| jigs, The Hag At The Churn, Lark in The Morning etc. and they'll
| drown out videos with the actual jig I want.
| 
| After that I have to experiment with variations like, "Monaghan
| Jig concertina," "Monaghan Jig pub session" etc to find the other
| videos YouTube's search had dismissed for me that indeed included
| "Monaghan Jig" in both the title and the content.
| 
| With this operator I can hopefully save myself a lot of guesswork
| and frustration.
 
  | jjoonathan wrote:
  | I'm just glad that there's still an operator that isn't just
  | ignored.
  | 
  | I half suspect that this is a mistake and youtube will correct
  | it quickly once word spreads.
 
| withinboredom wrote:
| From watching with closed captions turned on. I can guess why
| their search is so terrible. Loud noises turns into closed
| captions (the ones generated by them) which probably gets
| indexed.
 
| ok123456 wrote:
| use yandex to search for youtube videos.
 
  | Minor49er wrote:
  | Similar here. I often use Google itself to search for YouTube
  | videos since the results aren't as immediately filled with
  | random nonsense as with YouTube's own search
 
| throwawaygog6 wrote:
| While we are here, is there a service that provides me with list
| of newly uploaded youtube videos? In my mother tongue (south
| indian language), I have many interesting channels but youtube
| does not surface them by default. I just want to go through the
| list and write an algorithm to filter them out based on
| mypreferences.
| 
| Is there somebody who scrapes them youtube and sells the data
 
  | kmfrk wrote:
  | You can still use
  | https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id={CHANNEL...
  | to pull up the RSS feed for a channel.
 
  | ttymck wrote:
  | Does the subscribe feature do what you are looking for?
 
    | throwawaygog6 wrote:
    | Subscribe does not help me in discovering new channels on
    | topics I want.
 
  | gxqoz wrote:
  | I use NewPipe on Android and it has an option to show a
  | chronological list of all new videos from all channels I'm
  | subscribed to.
 
| upupandup wrote:
| what i would appreciate is if i could not see videos ive seen
| before twice.
| 
| also the ability to search videos that is under a specific view
| count or likes that has bee uploaded between specific date
| ranges.
 
| thomassmith65 wrote:
| If I had a magic wand, I'd create a non-profit, funded by the
| world's governments, to host the bulk of the world's videos.
| Wojcicki's Youtube doesn't care if when a user browses the site,
| it's like wading through a sea of garbage, as long as the user
| browses for as many hours as possible.
 
  | BuyMyBitcoins wrote:
  | Browsing YouTube without an AdBlocker and cosmetic filters that
  | hide emblems and badges on the video player is truly shocking.
  | I really sense the goal of YouTube isn't to get you to watch
  | something, it's to get you to watch _something else_ - at all
  | times.
  | 
  | I've seen it recommend related videos as soon as the video
  | starts playing. It will recommend videos as soon as you click
  | pause. There will be little interstitial recommendation
  | overlays as it plays. How desperate must product managers at
  | YouTube be to push this so strongly?
  | 
  | Thankfully I crafted some filters to hide all of this, but it's
  | so user hostile that I feel bad for anyone that doesn't know
  | how to get rid of all this noise.
 
  | ctoth wrote:
  | Didn't recognize the name, Googled her (CEO of YouTube), today
  | is her birthday. Funny.
 
    | thomassmith65 wrote:
    | Up until 2018, I used to joke that "Youtube is CEO-less."
    | There were articles bemoaning Youtube's toxicity, but they
    | never contained the word 'Wojcicki'.
    | 
    | These days, the press sometimes - though still not often -
    | mentions her name.
 
| clircle wrote:
| All search engines are bad now because search engines have turned
| into recommendation engines in the past 5-10 years.
 
  | MrBlueIncognito wrote:
  | Sometimes these tangentially-related search results help people
  | discover new things they would've otherwise missed out on. I
  | believe striking a balance between recommendations and to-the-
  | point results is necessary.
 
| rhacker wrote:
| I did a youtube search for:
| 
| attaching a prehung door
| 
| and
| 
| intitle: attaching a prehung door
| 
| and the results are identical (for me at least). The results are
| also extremely relevant and concise in showing me how to install
| a prehung door. I am not really sure what people mean. Are people
| asking youtube to find videos that don't exist? like "how to make
| tritan plastic"
 
  | mbirth wrote:
  | If it works anything like with the plain Google search, the
  | modifier only applies to text directly following the colon.
  | 
  | E.g.:                 intitle:door
  | 
  | will find all videos with "door" in their title.
  | intitle:"prehung door"
  | 
  | will find all videos where these two words in exactly that
  | order are mentioned in the title.
  | 
  | So to have it search for all words in the title, you'd have to
  | do a search for:                 intitle:attaching intitle:a
  | intitle:prehung intitle:door
 
  | sndean wrote:
  | I just did "tour de france 2022 stage 4" and "intitle: tour de
  | france 2022 stage 4". For me the results are close but notably
  | the first several results went from an average video length of
  | ~4 minutes to ~40 minutes, including someone's two-hour-long
  | stream.
  | 
  | Maybe it really depends on what you're searching for. But I
  | also rarely see many irrelevant results, including for this
  | search.
 
| lajosbacs wrote:
| How I make youtube bearable:
| 
| - subscribe through RSS only
| 
| - block all 'related videos' boxes with the picker tool from
| ublock
 
  | jacooper wrote:
  | Or just use Newpipe/Piped :).
 
    | mbirth wrote:
    | Or FreeTube
 
| mgdlbp wrote:
| Reminds me of this comment hinting at a search technique that the
| user doesn't want to say publicly lest YouTube remove it.
| 
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30630286
| 
| ( _What is it?? :P_ )
 
| jbay808 wrote:
| While we're here, does YouTube search support date range
| specifiers? I sometimes want to find a video I remember being
| published in, say, 2014, but the title might be hard to search
| for or get buried under similar names. YouTube's UI filters only
| let me limit to some hard-coded ranges, all of which prioritize
| recent videos.
 
  | groovybits wrote:
  | I found this site that has operators you can type in the search
  | bar:
  | 
  | https://seosly.com/youtube-search-operators/
  | 
  | Date operators:                 before:[date]
  | after:[date]            [search term], today            [search
  | term], last hour            [search term], this month
  | [search term], this year
  | 
  | I tried the search:                 tesla, before:2019-01-02,
  | after:2019-01-01
  | 
  | And it appeared to work like you'd expect.
  | 
  | Edit: I'm not sure how intuitive the operators are. Ex:
  | Combining them doesn't seem to give the expected results.
 
    | abraae wrote:
    | It's so weird to me how hard it is to find this sort of
    | reference information.
    | 
    | I experienced the same thing when looking for a definitive
    | list of voice commands for Android auto.
    | 
    | In the old days we carried around pocket sized cards with the
    | full set of all possible instructions/ parameters.
    | 
    | These days you have to search on Google, and then look at
    | whichever ad-ridden hellhole has played the SEO game most
    | effectively. That might have the answers, or it might be
    | stale since it was originally copied and pasted from some
    | other site long ago.
    | 
    | Why doesn't YouTube provide this information themselves?
 
    | sergers wrote:
    | believe its your use of commas,
    | 
    | need to use plus "+"
    | 
    | tesla, before:2019-01-02 + after:2019-01-01
    | 
    | i came across another site that had a few more,
    | https://granwehr.com/blog/youtube-search-
    | operators#15-advanc...
 
  | mgdlbp wrote:
  | The date range filter of your search engine of choice, combined
  | with 'site:youtube.com'. You also get the other behaviours of
  | that search engine, though Google probably has the most
  | complete index in this case.
  | 
  | I've also tried the 'sort by oldest' programmed Google search
  | that was posted here,[1] but its index seems to be missing many
  | pages--youtube videos with few views in particular--compared to
  | general Google.
  | 
  | [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31333436
 
| BLO716 wrote:
| Oh my, two posts where Google Dorking and #OSINT have found their
| way into posts. :) Love it!!! DefCon funzies abound on HN today.
| 
| https://www.simplilearn.com/tutorials/cyber-security-tutoria...
| 
| Search Engine - "Google Dorking" like inurl: intitle: intext:
| etc.
| 
| Also, google dorking has its "darkweb" side in forensics too.
| Enjoy.
| 
| https://www.exploit-db.com/
 
  | brezelgoring wrote:
  | I found in the <"indexof:" include/> clue that our Social
  | Sciences faculty is wide open, thanks!
 
| mxmilkiib wrote:
| Sort by upload date also cuts out semi-related results
 
| tmaly wrote:
| I would be curious to know what other advance search type
| keywords work in YouTube
 
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