To improve search results on YouTube, use the search prefix “intitle:” • Hacker News Board

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

#51

Post by asciiresort » Tue, Jul 05, 2022, 8:42 PM UTC

Tijdreiziger wrote: post #29

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 (ä1.com). This feels kind of odd to me. [Punycode] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Punycode [IDN] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internationalized_domain_name

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

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

#52

Post by doliveira » Tue, Jul 05, 2022, 8:44 PM UTC

WASDx wrote: post #47

doliveira wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

You're the exception. They naturally do A/B testing and are data-driven to optimize for said objectives.

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.

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

#53

Post by withinboredom » Tue, Jul 05, 2022, 8:45 PM UTC

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.

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

#54

Post by throwawaygog6 » Tue, Jul 05, 2022, 8:46 PM UTC

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

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

#55

Post by ttymck » Tue, Jul 05, 2022, 8:47 PM UTC

throwawaygog6 wrote: post #54

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

Does the subscribe feature do what you are looking for?

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

#56

Post by kmfrk » Tue, Jul 05, 2022, 8:59 PM UTC

throwawaygog6 wrote: post #54

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

You can still use https://www.youtube.com/feeds/videos.xml?channel_id={CHANNEL... to pull up the RSS feed for a channel.

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

#57

Post by kmfrk » Tue, Jul 05, 2022, 9:00 PM UTC

slig wrote: post #7

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.

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.

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

#58

Post by TaylorAlexander » Tue, Jul 05, 2022, 9:06 PM UTC

Beltalowda wrote: post #26

doliveira wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

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 w…

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.

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

#59

Post by rhacker » Tue, Jul 05, 2022, 9:15 PM UTC

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"

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

#60

Post by hamandcheese » Tue, Jul 05, 2022, 9:19 PM UTC

WASDx wrote: post #47

doliveira wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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".

You're the exception. They naturally do A/B testing and are data-driven to optimize for said objectives.

I’m sure if YouTube PMs could they would mail you cocaine if it made you watch enough ads.