Inside YouTube’s Next Phase For Searching

Everyday people come to YouTube looking for learning content like “physics tutorials, how-to draw a tiger, product reviews on the latest tech products, and more.” Finally, YouTube is now launching new ways to help people more easily search and find content on YouTube.  Let’s have a look inside the new ways.

Neal Mohan, Chief Product Officer of YouTube says: “YouTube’s enormous library of content has always set us apart as a platform. No matter what you’re looking for, there’s a good chance we have it on YouTube. But we know viewers need to easily find the videos they’re looking for, and quickly access the information they need. Our teams have invested significantly in improving that search experience over the years, and in today’s installment of our Innovation Series, we’re excited to share the latest technology to help you find what you’re looking for, from how-tos to DIYs. This complements the work we’re doing to raise videos from authoritative sources when people come to YouTube looking for news and health information.“

Making Searches More Visual

YouTube has made its search page more visual after people told it that they would like an easier way to see what a video is about. The more visual search page will give people a “better glimpse of what’s inside a video.“

“Up until now, when you browsed for a video to watch on YouTube, you’d see a thumbnail image of each video. It gave you a chance to gather a quick snapshot of the video’s content. Now, you’ll be able to make even more informed decisions about what you’re going to watch through video chapters directly in the search page. When available, these time-stamped images detail the different topics covered in videos and let you better evaluate the video you’re about to watch. You can also jump directly to the section most relevant to your specific interest.” says YouTube in their blog post.

To be able to see a snippet of each video brings in helpful context. On desktop users can see snippets of the video when they scroll over. YouTube is rolling out a mobile version of this feature to help viewers easily preview videos and decide what they are looking for.

Making More Content Available To Everyone

There are a lot of videos on YouTube that don’t always cover every topic across every language. While we say that YouTube is always looking for new ways to provide more accessible and inclusive information globally. YouTube now has some exciting approaches to improve content searches.

“We’re starting to show search results from other languages with automatically translated captions, titles and descriptions when relevant content in the local language isn’t available. This means that someone in Thailand can learn about quantum physics from a professor at MIT or viewers in Brazil can explore the Grand Canyon from home, with captions in their local language. We’ll start supplementing search results with English videos and plan to expand to more languages. Our hope is that all global content will become more accessible through translated captions and help creators reach a more global audience.” says YouTube.