How Google Ranks Videos

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.'"

Comments

No pigeons?

[MarkByers]

And I was so sure they were using a team of trained pigeons...

Re:No pigeons?

[markild]

And I was so sure they were using a team of trained pigeons...

Nah.. That's just for regular web-pages.

That's what makes this so special. They actually had to sit down and make an algorithm.

Re:No pigeons?

[richdun]

My money was on manatees.

Barbie Girl

[rogerramrod]

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

"Algorithms and ranking system"

[GillBates0]

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.

Re:"Algorithms and ranking system"

[Temporal]

Actually, it's a whole lot more complicated and interesting than you think. The idea is that videos which have been steadily popular for a long time shouldn't show up, but videos which have become popular recently should. So, you don't see the same old boring videos every day like you do with the top 100 list.

I wonder how accurate this is.

[micheas]

If you look at what google publishes about pagerank and compare what they say with the search results returned by google.com you will notice discrepencies.

For example google claims that they do not return urls that contain '&id=' but that is clearly not the case. (Joomla and Mambo sites without seo enabled would have substantially fewer pages returned than they do if this was the case.)

I have come to feel that I can trust google about like I can trust my own contries military. (after independent verifiaction, and I need some reason to believe second source is not compromised.) But there are gems in the statements so I read them and after I am done reading I have more questions than before.

This looks like a small glimps into one component of pagerank. But the article is pretty light on substance.

Nothing like destroying an early beta

[baadger]

So they rank video's by how _suddenly_ they become popular...and we go an put it up for a Slashdotting. Good luck unraveling them stats Googlers.

Hmmm

[Laurent Van Winckel]

The algorithm doesn't seem to be quite ready, as I'm not really pleased by the rank of some videos. Anyway, the movers top list seem to work fine, I'm seeing many World Cup videos :)

I'm flabergasted

[suv4x4]

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.

Re:I'm flabergasted

[hackstraw]

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

We are geeks. We have seen Google come from nothing to the best piece of real estate on the web. Google has changed our vocabulary. A new verb is now in it, called "google". Kinda like the "slashdot effect" and others.

I mean, check out what is "news" to the rest of the world -- http://news.google.com/news?hl=en&ned=us&q=paris+h ilton&btnG=Search+News

A dumb blond wrecking her car...

Re:I'm flabergasted

[suv4x4]

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.

I've never been so embarrassed in my life.

[born_to_live_forever]

I'm from Denmark, so naturally my first thought was to see which vids were considered most popular in Denmark, according to Google. The results were disheartening, embarrassing, but far from surprising.

Crazy Frog.

Dozens and dozens of crappy variations of a done-to-death meme.

Kill me now, and get it over with.

Re:I've never been so embarrassed in my life.

[lagfest]

Oh it's not that bad, only 44 out of the top 60 vids are Crazy Frog related.
I, for one, welcome our new Crazy Frog overlord.

Re:How hard could it possibly be to...

[moonbender]

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.

self-fulfilling prophecy

[robinesque]

It would seem to me the most popular videos will continue to become more popular...because everyone is going to click on the #1 ranked video, including all of these slashdotters.

This doesnt work

[HaMMeReD3]

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.