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YouTube's search function is atrocious now [video]

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Re: YouTube's search function is atrocious now [video]

#41

Post by nozzlegear »

troad wrote: post #18

I recently searched for a homey cooking recipe and YouTube pulled up a video titled something like 'Tearful father says goodbye to daughter before gang assassination', with a correspondingly horrifying thumbnail. I responded by logging out, deleting the cookies for my YouTube container, and adding the YouTube domain to my adblock. My use of YouTube is now restricted to RSS feeds for channels I like, redirected to an…

> 'Tearful father says goodbye to daughter before gang assassination'

I’ve had this one suggested to me multiple times as well for completely unrelated content. It’s not the kind of thing that I watch or would click on even out of curiosity, but YouTube really thinks I should watch it for some reason.

Re: YouTube's search function is atrocious now [video]

#42

Post by lIIllIIllIIllII »

preommr wrote: post #22

The UX for google products has gotten so much worse. I've had problems with youtube search recently, but because I use google more often it's so much more obvious with google search. Like I hate how they have that bar that keeps changing different search modes, before 'images', 'videos' used to be in a fixed position, now I have to go searching for it in a soup of unrelated words like 'Finance', 'Flights', etc.

IMO Android UX is pretty great, for a personal computing device. YouTube's UX is also pretty great, for an ad delivery network. It succeeds at showing you ads.

YouTube doesn't really care if the search function gives you the right or wrong search result. Totally irrelevant as long as you click something, anything and your eyeballs are on the next ad. YouTube is optimised for keeping you watching ... literally anything... as long as they can play you some ads, preferably expensive ads.

Re: YouTube's search function is atrocious now [video]

#43

Post by lIIllIIllIIllII »

leoh wrote: post #3

I wonder if a distributed attempt to build a complementary index for YouTube could be an answer; wherein users install a browser plugin that captures the results and metadata of a given query or metadata when a video is watched.

Surely most search engines would have indexed most videos at this point?

You could run classifiers against the video but $$$

Re: YouTube's search function is atrocious now [video]

#44

Post by al2o3cr »

One particularly annoying "you had ONE JOB" thing: automatic captions aren't consistently searched either via the Youtube search or via the main Google product.

For instance, searching for the double-quoted string "bears don't like it when you solve" verbatim gives zero results, but that's exactly the transcript for 8:14 here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1G9vIyNL20&t=491s

Particularly frustrating when I remember a random snippet or phrase from a video but not the _title_

Re: YouTube's search function is atrocious now [video]

#45

Post by lIIllIIllIIllII »

throw_m239339 wrote: post #37

Everytime I use youtube search now I'm getting disgusting, sexualized recs when I search for a specific topic that is completely unrelated to that crap. I cannot even block these recommendations from the search result list, I cannot block these channels. Youtube/Google have simply become insane. You're at work, looking for some Youtube coding tutorial, and you get some video with a sexual thumbnail, or something abou…

Quite likely that someone on your wifi, or someone with whom you share videos, is clicking on those. The algo gives you recommendations from other people.

Re: YouTube's search function is atrocious now [video]

#46

Post by Cpoll »

ryeights wrote: post #9
leoh wrote: post #3

I wonder if a distributed attempt to build a complementary index for YouTube could be an answer; wherein users install a browser plugin that captures the results and metadata of a given query or metadata when a video is watched.

This would amount to doing free labor to prop up a trillion dollar company’s subpar product. Then again, YouTube is only barely profitable as-is right? And getting people to switch to a more sustainable paid alternative is a non-starter. So maybe this is the future we deserve

> free labor to prop up a trillion dollar company’s subpar product

This presumes you're doing the trillion dollar company a favor, but an independent index isn't likely to align with YT's engagement goals.

Re: YouTube's search function is atrocious now [video]

#48

Post by arrakeen »

nozzlegear wrote: post #41
troad wrote: post #18

I recently searched for a homey cooking recipe and YouTube pulled up a video titled something like 'Tearful father says goodbye to daughter before gang assassination', with a correspondingly horrifying thumbnail. I responded by logging out, deleting the cookies for my YouTube container, and adding the YouTube domain to my adblock. My use of YouTube is now restricted to RSS feeds for channels I like, redirected to an…

> 'Tearful father says goodbye to daughter before gang assassination' I’ve had this one suggested to me multiple times as well for completely unrelated content. It’s not the kind of thing that I watch or would click on even out of curiosity, but YouTube really thinks I should watch it for some reason.

same. i even reported the video but it appears to be perennial

Re: YouTube's search function is atrocious now [video]

#49

Post by Baljhin »

colmvp wrote: post #11

YT search results also show results that have literally nothing to do with the query. Stop showing me videos I watched previously when I'm literally in the midst of trying to find something specific.

There's a userscript that can 'mask' AND hide previously watched vids -- try 'youtube-hide-watched' by EvHaus - https://github.com/EvHaus/youtube-hide-watched

Re: YouTube's search function is atrocious now [video]

#50

Post by Baljhin »

'Now'??!? Youtube's search has been literally broken for more than a year, several of us mentioned this on HN months ago.

e.g. Y-search used to honor the operators like 'intitle:' and `|` like G-search, but that functionality is long gone. I'm not even convinced '-' works anymore.

Nothing's gonna save their query system except Google's backend engineers. Good luck waiting for that.

---

Until then I highly recommend using userscripts/addons to bring some sanity back to using the platform:

'Block Youtube Users' : "hides videos of users/channels from home, search, related, and comments"

https://greasyfork.org/scripts/11057-block-youtube-users

~~ My favorite! It's like GHHbD[0] but from within Youtube.

[0] http://www.jeffersonscher.com/gm/google-hit-hider/

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'YouTube: Hide Watched Videos' by EvHaus : 'mask or hide visibility of watched videos and shorts'

https://github.com/EvHaus/youtube-hide-watched

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'Return WATCHED badge on Youtube (with custom text)' by q1k : "Brings back the WATCHED overlay to the videos you have already watched"

https://greasyfork.org/scripts/419722-return-watched-badge-o...

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'YouTube Clickbait-Buster' by hjk789 : "Check whether it's worth watching a video before actually clicking on it, by 'peeking' its visual or verbal content, description, comments, viewing the thumbnail in full-size and displaying the full title"

https://github.com/hjk789/Userscripts/tree/master/YouTube-Cl...

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'Youtube Scrollable Right Side Description' by sh3ll : "Description is moved on the right, expanded and scrollable (and a view-count is put under the player)" {FYI: if you use a white or light theme on YT, go into the script and change the view-count text to something dark}

https://greasyfork.org/scripts/452405-youtube-scrollable-rig...

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'Make "Videos" the default tab on Youtube channels', a contrib by Scriptchansky

https://greasyfork.org/en/discussions/requests/56798#comment...

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