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Show HN: I made a YouTube search form with advanced filters

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Re: Show HN: I made a YouTube search form with advanced filters

#121

Post by dns_snek »

danpalmer wrote: post #90
Barrin92 wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>What specific kinds of queries does it do badly at? in my experience all of them, because the experience for me currently is that youtube surfaces ~3 videos relevant to the search I entered, then the bizarre category of "here's other stuff you want to watch" (I don't) followed by "stuff you already watched but want to watch again" (I don't and didn't ask), followed by like 10 shorts and then again a handful of resul…

I haven't noticed this because in all of the above examples the first result is the one I want, almost without exception. In a scenario where the top result or two is correct, showing other stuff after result 3 doesn't sound that bad. What sorts of searches are you doing? My guess is this really matters and that you're using search for a completely different purpose to me, but I don't know what that is.

I'm not the person you were asking, but broadly speaking, almost any instructional video.

How do I do/fix/repair/cook/make XYZ?

It's a complete lottery whether the top 3 results will actually answer the question and they usually won't.

Re: Show HN: I made a YouTube search form with advanced filters

#123

Post by dns_snek »

tcherasaro wrote: post #68

Potentially unpopular idea: Maybe YouTube search is so bad because videos are poorly optimized for search. Today most of the emphasis to creators on YouTube is to create content that targets browse traffic and shorts to go viral and get millions of views. Not so much videos targeting specific user intent with a term that might get 2k views per month if it ranks #1.

You have that causal relationship flipped around. Content is being optimized for clickbait engagement because that's the only way to survive, many creators have talked about this.

The algorithms are pushing garbage clickbait and AI slop while cutting off all other discovery avenues like search, this is obvious on youtube because the "search results" only contain 3 of those and then it's just more unrelated recommended garbage, the intent there couldn't be more clear.

Rossmann talked about how his repair & data recovery business website that had tons of honest, professional, high quality content for years suddenly dropped off Google and it was killing his business, but when he followed Gemini's advice and recreated the website with AI slop it started ranking #1 within weeks.

Re: Show HN: I made a YouTube search form with advanced filters

#124

Post by Red_or_Blue »

gsky wrote: post #27
VenezuelaFree wrote: post #14

Search is the reason I stopped watching youtube, I used to view and discover so many nice stuff in there, tutorials, new hobbies, new music, new creators with different interests, etc but now it's pretty much impossible to find, you are forced to watch the 3 top videos, some 3 ads and then it forces you to watch some other random unrelated crap, it's so annoying and frustrating It got so bad that even searching the f…

on top of that it pushes worst creators (who are the biggest thanks to yt) content.

[dead]

Re: Show HN: I made a YouTube search form with advanced filters

#125

Post by rhdunn »

carefree-bob wrote: post #93
danpalmer wrote: post #84

Can anyone describe the problem and use-case in more detail? I've heard this before but it just doesn't resonate at all, and I'm a pretty heavy YouTube user. I mostly watch videos from my home feed or from channels I subscribe to. When I search it's almost always either: - film/game trailers I've heard about and want to find (e.g. gta vi trailer) - videos I've watched before but maybe not liked, with a channel keywor…

It works pretty well for me, but my searches are mostly automotive youtube or some tech stuff. So if I want to know how to replace the water pump on my car, I type in the make and model and "water pump" and I usually find what I am looking for fairly easily.

That search (e.g. `ford fiesta water pump`) is consistent for me as well, except for an "explore more" section in the middle of the results.

So it does seem to be specific searches where it gives up after the first 7-10 results (or decides to show you some more related results after 20-30 additional unrelated results).

I wonder if this is algorithmic. E.g. people searching for a specific "how to replace/fix ..." are not going to click on results from their recommended feed, so the algorithm could have learned to keep those results fixed. However, someone looking for a piece of entertainment (trailer, book review, etc.) may be more inclined to click on other unrelated content, so those searches are more inclined to show results from the user's recommended feed.

Re: Show HN: I made a YouTube search form with advanced filters

#126

Post by baobun »

dns_snek wrote: post #110
tyrust wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good thing I work on internal infrastructure and not pointing a gun to this guy's head to prevent him from scrolling down past the first three results or refining his query.

There is no "scrolling down past the first 3 results" because everything after that is recommended garbage that's unrelated to the search query. And as they already said, "refining the search query" doesn't work because it wouldn't find the video even if they searched its exact title. Furthermore, search is fundamentally broken in that it translates your query and then tries to match every title in every language tha…

For real. Trying to find a specific video on youtube is a very similar experience to searching for legit cables and adapters on Amazon.

Re: Show HN: I made a YouTube search form with advanced filters

#127

Post by WhyIsItAlwaysHN »

Maybe this is an unpopular opinion, but this seems to just create the search string in the url, aka youtube search already supports these features.

If people were really looking for exact title search they could write "term".

It is definitely true that youtube's search is optimized for engagement, but going through a separate ui just to search it seems a bit redundant, especially if after I click search I have ti deal with youtube's UI.

Re: Show HN: I made a YouTube search form with advanced filters

#128

Post by t0bia_s »

VenezuelaFree wrote: post #14

Search is the reason I stopped watching youtube, I used to view and discover so many nice stuff in there, tutorials, new hobbies, new music, new creators with different interests, etc but now it's pretty much impossible to find, you are forced to watch the 3 top videos, some 3 ads and then it forces you to watch some other random unrelated crap, it's so annoying and frustrating It got so bad that even searching the f…

https://freetubeapp.io/

Advanced search works. Also auto-skipped sponsored content, thumbnails directly from video content, no google account to use it, subscribe works, no ads and many more...

Re: Show HN: I made a YouTube search form with advanced filters

#129

Post by atoav »

VenezuelaFree wrote: post #14

Search is the reason I stopped watching youtube, I used to view and discover so many nice stuff in there, tutorials, new hobbies, new music, new creators with different interests, etc but now it's pretty much impossible to find, you are forced to watch the 3 top videos, some 3 ads and then it forces you to watch some other random unrelated crap, it's so annoying and frustrating It got so bad that even searching the f…

Surely they just want to avoid straining their database so they put some "performance hacks" into their database instructions that they Ab/B-tested to "work" for 90 percent of people or something.

Meanwhile they could have just returned the titles of all your videos you have ever watched as a list and let your computer do the heavey lifting by searching through that text on the frontend only to fetch thumbnails and such for the final matches. I have a webservice with a table of 4000 lines or more and I can search it quasi instantly on my smartphone with a simple Javascript script hooked up to an input field.

Re: Show HN: I made a YouTube search form with advanced filters

#130

Post by eMPee584 »

insin wrote: post #66
tyrust wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> you are forced to watch the 3 top videos, some 3 ads and then it forces you to watch some other random unrelated crap, it's so annoying and frustrating Brother, you are the one choosing the videos.

It's gone massively downhill recently, noticeably so since the ability to sort by upload date was removed from the UI (and then very quickly removed from the API too). That was the final brick that prevented it from being literally unusable, now it's scroll and hope (and give up).

before:2024-08 after:2023-06 to the rescue? manual but works, even though on queries for "trending" keywords results will still be flooded with hits that should be filtered..
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