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To improve search results on YouTube, use the search prefix “intitle:”

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Re: To improve search results on YouTube, use the search prefix “intitle:”

#101

Post by userbinator »

mbirth wrote: post #85
toxik wrote: post #62

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 b…

Invidious was such project, IIRC.

...and still is.

Unfortunately it does not improve the search results either, because AFAIK it only proxies them from YT itself.

Re: To improve search results on YouTube, use the search prefix “intitle:”

#102

Post by jjoonathan »

foerbert wrote: post #91
jjoonathan wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 :/

Which extension did you use for this? I basically use YouTube only without logging in, and rely a lot on the front page for my current interests (channels I want to remember long-term go in my RSS reader). It seems like YouTube always has a channel or two it insists on pushing repeatedly no matter how often I ignore their videos.

BlockTube. It's great! Highly recommended.

Re: To improve search results on YouTube, use the search prefix “intitle:”

#103

Post by TuringNYC »

maest wrote: post #37
causi wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't forget how you get five or six results from your search term before it starts listing random videos like it has ADHD.

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-v…

>> I'm sure the YT PMs have proof that this improves engagement.

...and it probably does in the short term, as you just try to engage more with the software trying ever harder to find what you want. But probably also kills engagement in the long term. Personal experience with this: Facebook post-2020 vs Facebook pre-2015.

Facebook pre-2015 was so magical as I was finally reconnecting with long-lost school friends and childhood neighbors we long lost touch with (pre-email friends.)

Facebook post-2020 is me engaging desperately to see something other than the same 10 repeated posts per day...knowing full well that the magic is still in there, just not visible by default. And then one day I just stopped checking.

Re: To improve search results on YouTube, use the search prefix “intitle:”

#104

Post by throwntoday »

Gigachad wrote: post #93
rhacker wrote: post #59

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"

HN will often claim something is unusable and not what it used to be when the general public is quite happy with it and its working very well. I think it's more a bias against the wider product or company. HN users do not like YouTube and Google in general so any minor issue gets overblown while they would be quite happy to compile a new kernel to get PeerTube running.

It's not a conspiracy that Google/Youtube search have degraded to near unusable for niche searches. All I can say is that you're probably not searching for anything too specific.

Re: To improve search results on YouTube, use the search prefix “intitle:”

#105

Post by mgdlbp »

mbirth wrote: post #86
rhacker wrote: post #59

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"

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:…

Or use,

  allintitle: attaching a prehung door
But it seems that allintitle can only be used at the beginning of a query, so there's no way to combine it with non-title keywords.

Engines supporting parentheses like Reddit's or Elasticsearch prevail here:

  title:(attaching a prehung door)
But for some reason that doesn't work in Wikipedia's search, even though CirrusSearch is based on Elasticsearch.

Re: To improve search results on YouTube, use the search prefix “intitle:”

#106

Post by Gigachad »

throwntoday wrote: post #104
Gigachad wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

HN will often claim something is unusable and not what it used to be when the general public is quite happy with it and its working very well. I think it's more a bias against the wider product or company. HN users do not like YouTube and Google in general so any minor issue gets overblown while they would be quite happy to compile a new kernel to get PeerTube running.

It's not a conspiracy that Google/Youtube search have degraded to near unusable for niche searches. All I can say is that you're probably not searching for anything too specific.

I have searched for specific things a lot. Usually I just search what I remember being in the video rather than what I thought the title was. The right video comes up even when the words I search did not show up in the title or description. Google's ability to search is only just short of being magic.

Meanwhile, the products which HN promotes regularly like Mastodon and PeerTube fail to find things with directly searching the title text because P2P search is completely non functional.

Re: To improve search results on YouTube, use the search prefix “intitle:”

#108

Post by pjbeam »

ithinkso wrote: post #76
maest wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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-v…

> 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 g…

Successfully being a PM and successfully managing a product are often at odds with each other. I've seen few do it well. Not really picking on PMs either, as both an SDE and now an EM I deal with similar tensions. Gotta love corpo life.

Re: To improve search results on YouTube, use the search prefix “intitle:”

#109

Post by saagarjha »

Gigachad wrote: post #106
throwntoday wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a conspiracy that Google/Youtube search have degraded to near unusable for niche searches. All I can say is that you're probably not searching for anything too specific.

I have searched for specific things a lot. Usually I just search what I remember being in the video rather than what I thought the title was. The right video comes up even when the words I search did not show up in the title or description. Google's ability to search is only just short of being magic. Meanwhile, the products which HN promotes regularly like Mastodon and PeerTube fail to find things with directly sear…

People typically compare products with previous iterations of themselves.

Re: To improve search results on YouTube, use the search prefix “intitle:”

#110

Post by paulpauper »

I just want fewer ads. So many ads and sponsors. 10-15 second intro ads, then 10-second middle ads, and then ending ads. ANd then also sponsorship ads. I know there are extensions that can block some of these, but it's so aggravating too.
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