Google Video QuickCheck: YouTube, Indexed Sites
If you ask me how often I use Google Video, I would say less than 3 times a week - contra the frequency of YouTube (about 5-20 times a day). So I wandered into the Google Video site with a hope that I would change this percentage. Still not. Yes, I am still frustrated by video search. But not 20-40% but 60%, I guess. Because I am impatient - because I can afford to be impatient seeing what normal search engines can do. That’s a general user approach. Now my more professional approach - being fully aware that indexing, cataloging videos is totally different from indexing texts and words - simply puzzles me: why I prefer to use youtube to Google Video. And I don’t know. The layout? nah. Nevertheless.
The steamboat of Google Video has taken long miles, and is under change constantly. A day after Martin Luther King (Jr)’s day, we can still see Martin Luther King’s famous “I have a dream” speech (originally on youtube) in its full length as the number 1 hot video with more than 8600 ratings. Why is it the hottest? Because currently it has been the most blogged (not viewed, commented or emailed). Instead of a screenshot, here’s just a link to Google Video.
It is quite self-explanatory that Google video has placed more and more emphasis on community and usability features (most blogged, most viewed, most shared, google video alert) as well as personalized search (recommendations). You get recommendations on the right side, which are customized for your search history. I am not really happy with the results yet, and it is clear that the ones I favorited on my youtube account (using the same email address as Google search uses for me) are absolutely ignored when Google Video tries to recommend me something - strange, don’t you think?
Movers and Shakers
There is this menu opzion called Movers and Shakers where you can browse by date (picking a day but not date ranges) and by certain countries like US, Israel, Japan (e.g. Hungary not included yet). The function of Movers and Shakers is not crystal clear though as the video hit list can buffle users. A one sentence info on what we can get in Movers and Shakers would help. I assume that here you will see the videos that were most viewed on a given day in a given country (not most commented or rated - many viewers do not take the trouble to click a rate or to post a comment).
Sites indexed by Google Video
Search Engine Land writes: “Google Video now can include video results from YouTube, Vimeo.com, CollegeHumor, eBaumsWorld, MetaCafe, Google Video itself, Yahoo Video or MySpace.” In addition to these one, a search today (Jan 22 2008) for ‘ww2′ shows Veoh, expoTV, Revver, Crackle, Divx, Broadcaster, Guba, 56.com, zippyvideos, liveleak, gofish, MyVideo.de, youku, funnyordie, uncutvideo.aol, jumpcut, etc. While the exciting keyword ‘umbrella’ shows results from tudou, Daily Motion, Stupid Videos, Expert Village, Seven Load, etc. ‘Penguin’ reveals further hits from go.com, naturefootage, break, etc.
So the indexed sites are numerous, but the efficiency is far behind that of the general Google search. And I want to be won over by Google Video to get more from more video sites. Convince me.