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How Google Ranks Videos

Posted by ryuzaki0 on from the hello-kate-monster dept.

Nirnimesh writes "Google reveals their ranking system for videos on the official blog. The system lists videos according to their country-wide popularity. From the article: 'We use algorithms to identify videos that are suddenly becoming popular, and then rank them based on how popular they are -- and how suddenly they became popular. We've been using this list internally, and now it's ready to share with you, so check it out. Right now this feature highlights videos from close to 40 countries, including Argentina, Australia, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Estonia, Finland, Greece, Hong Kong, India, Israel, Japan, South Korea, Mexico, and New Zealand, to name a few.'"

6 of 69 comments (clear)

  1. Barbie Girl by rogerramrod · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I don't think the algorithm is quite ready for prime time yet,
    seeing that currently the most popular video on Google is of a chubby nerdy tranvestite playbacking a song of Aqua

  2. "Algorithms and ranking system" by GillBates0 · · Score: 2, Insightful
    We use algorithms to identify videos that are suddenly becoming popular, and then rank them based on how popular they are -- and how suddenly they became popular.

    Seriously, this isn't all that cool (one might even say lame) even for news from Google. Even a simple (video_rank = num_video_views where num_video_views >threshold) would work from what I read from the description.

    But then, they just posted it on their blog, it's the "blogosphere" that blows/hypes it out of proportion.

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  3. I'm flabergasted by suv4x4 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You know, maybe it's not Google who hypes this up. Maybe they just posted it in a blog and the community took it up.

    Every single little thing Google does, no matter how trivial, is reported to take down Microsoft and take over the world.

    But COME ON, is this really worth an article on Slashdot:

    [we] rank them based on how popular they are

    Shit they better patent it before someone else figures it out!
    It's only literally every site with plenty of items that can be sorted based on popularity.

    1. Re:I'm flabergasted by suv4x4 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      We are geeks... I mean, check out what is "news" to the rest of the world. A dumb blond wrecking her car...

      I find this especially ironic. People care about Paris Hilton's car crash not because car crashes are particularly rare, but because Paris Hilton is really popular.

      And you're reasoning that Google ordering items by popularity is very important, not because ordering by popularity is particularly rare, but because Google is really popular.

      But you can always find comfort in the idea that we're "the geeks" and "the rest of the world" is just plain dumb and undeserving attention.

  4. Re:How hard could it possibly be to... by moonbender · · Score: 4, Insightful

    That's not hard. That's also not what they do, apparently. They actually try to detect popular videos before they are popular. That way a current video gets a higher rank than an old fad that got 2 billion downloads over the years. Think measuring acceleration instead of speed. That's probably not very hard, either. But the resulting page is still pretty cool.

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  5. This doesnt work by HaMMeReD3 · · Score: 2, Insightful

    There needs to be some form of user feedback, clickthroughs do not define good, just popular. People accidently watch all kinds of crap, they also should completely discount any random videos people pick.

    There should be some form of rating on the videos as well so the people subjected to them can say if they suck or not, cause most of them suck.