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Re:Show HN: VideoMentions – Search YouTube based on the spok... by PaulKeeble on Wednesday May 25, 2022 @09:38AM (#31504341)
One of the consequences of the effectiveness of click-bait titles on youtube is that searching for videos you watched historically is extremely difficult, because quite often the primary thing in the video is never mentioned in the title. The descriptions are almost universally used to store common links that are about the channel not the video and the consequence of this is that click-bait titled content is very hard to find after the fact. The other problem is quite a lot of channels are testing one title and then changing to another, the video wont then be found using the initial title and so even if you do remember elements of the title the channel may have made that impossible to use some hours or days later as another title with better performance was used.

I can see a need for search in the contents of the videos but I don't want to specify the channel, I likely don't know especially since channels can also change their name.

Re:Show HN: VideoMentions – Search YouTube based on the spok... by Akronymus on Wednesday May 25, 2022 @10:21AM (#31504913)
Also, the youtube built in search often fails to match videos that have a word in the title for which you search for.
Re:Show HN: VideoMentions – Search YouTube based on the spok... by andai on Wednesday May 25, 2022 @11:10AM (#31505680)
YouTube search is almost completely useless, I just use Google to find YouTube videos. It does seem to search in the video transcript and the comments (I'm not sure but it seems that way).
Re:Show HN: VideoMentions – Search YouTube based on the spok... by hbn on Wednesday May 25, 2022 @01:20PM (#31507545)
YouTube's search results will show you like 10 results of the thing you actually searched for, then resort to a section of completely random video suggestions unrelated to your search in hopes some thumbnail will draw your attention and suck you back in to wasting your time watching videos and being served ads.
Re:Show HN: VideoMentions – Search YouTube based on the spok... by lostinroutine on Wednesday May 25, 2022 @05:16PM (#31510675)
I also suffered from this issue for a while but then discovered "Unhook" browser extension, which in addition to many other amazing features (e.g. hide recommended videos/comments) has a feature to hide irrelevant search results. With the feature on I get an endless list of matching results and no junk.
Re:Show HN: VideoMentions – Search YouTube based on the spok... by Minor49er on Wednesday May 25, 2022 @10:52AM (#31505415)
I can't even find a specific channel when I spell it correctly, even with double quotes. I have to go into the filters and specify channels-only, and even then it puts a bunch of wrong results in front of it. Their search on YouTube used to be better, showing results for what was actually searched for. But now it seems like they're trying to drive views to high-performing videos since they now give a single page of results for any query before backfilling the results with a bunch of suggestions that have nothing to do with the search
Re:Show HN: VideoMentions – Search YouTube based on the spok... by Akronymus on Wednesday May 25, 2022 @10:56AM (#31505468)
Up until a few days ago I had a redirect for search that fisabled the suggestions on the search page. Now, if I do that, the search only gives 1, irrelevant, result.
Re:Show HN: VideoMentions – Search YouTube based on the spok... by nonameiguess on Wednesday May 25, 2022 @01:27PM (#31507646)
You should be able to just go directly to the channel using the URL if you know the channel name. youtube.com/c/<CHANNEL_NAME>. What on earth they use the distinction for, I don't know, but if it's a user with videos instead of a channel, then youtube.com/user/<USER_NAME>.
Re:Show HN: VideoMentions – Search YouTube based on the spok... by PaulKeeble on Wednesday May 25, 2022 @11:52AM (#31506298)
Youtube is clearly blacklisting certain channels and they can't be found via even precise searches.
Re:Show HN: VideoMentions – Search YouTube based on the spok... by sph on Wednesday May 25, 2022 @12:33PM (#31506841)
Unreasonable of you to expect search to be good in a Google product.
Re:Show HN: VideoMentions – Search YouTube based on the spok... by kellenmace on Wednesday May 25, 2022 @11:54PM (#31514304)
lol- my thoughts exactly. How can Google search be so good, while YouTube search is so abysmal? Google bought YouTube in 2006, so they've had 16 years to get it right :D
Re:Show HN: VideoMentions – Search YouTube based on the spok... by victor141516 on Saturday May 28, 2022 @03:47AM (#31538415)
I created a project exactly as you described: https://github.com/victor141516/YourArch
Re:Show HN: VideoMentions – Search YouTube based on the spok... by htrp on Wednesday May 25, 2022 @11:14AM (#31505734)
people also edit the titles of videos from time to time... so even the exact title doesn't help
Re:Show HN: VideoMentions – Search YouTube based on the spok... by corobo on Wednesday May 25, 2022 @11:54AM (#31506316)
Aye especially in modern day YouTube

Once you're big enough your stats start being useful, folks in the know (mrbeast's analytics guy, I can't think of more rn, etc) advise you rotate out the thumb/titles until the click through rate is decent