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YouTube Passes Yahoo As #2 Search Engine

Posted by timothy on from the your-safe-search-is-showing dept.

Dekortage writes "According to the latest ComScore rankings, YouTube's search traffic for August surpassed Yahoo's. The latter dropped roughly 5% in traffic from July. Among other things, this means that Google now owns both of the top two search engines. AdAge further speculates on Google's experimental 'promoted videos' cost-per-click advertising on YouTube, suggesting the obvious: more money."

125 comments

  1. Yeah, but... by InvisblePinkUnicorn · · Score: 4, Interesting

    But how much of this is RIAA/MPAA-run robots searching for song/movie names?

    1. Re:Yeah, but... by KamuZ · · Score: 1

      Well, it's not like they don't search on other engines either...

    2. Re:Yeah, but... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      None- comScore gets it's metrics through panel-based measurement, so it reflects human behavior.

  2. "Search engine"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Calling YouTube a "search engine" by comparison to Google and Yahoo is...interesting. I mean, I guess it's technically true, but it's about as relevant as comparing Google with Slashdot site search.

    1. Re:"Search engine"? by PitaBred · · Score: 4, Interesting

      A lot of people search the videos for information, talks by Richard Dawkins, car reviews, whatever. I think it's perfectly valid to call Youtube a search engine, even though it's a very specialized one.

      --
      My blog. Good stuff (when I remember to update it). Read it.
    2. Re:"Search engine"? by corsec67 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Would "grep" be considered a search engine, then?

      I use it to find stuff at work all the time.

      --
      If I have nothing to hide, don't search me
    3. Re:"Search engine"? by DancesWithBlowTorch · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's a rubbish use of the term. I guess Amazon might even be a bigger search engine than YouTube. Some of the big DNS servers are probably pretty big search engines as well.

      What a useless way of using words.

    4. Re:"Search engine"? by jonbryce · · Score: 4, Insightful

      video.google.com might be a search engine, because it can find videos from multiple sites, but mainly its own and youtube, but youtube is just a website with a search facility.

    5. Re:"Search engine"? by 4D6963 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      By that standard any site with a search feature is a search engine. A search engine is really something that provides search results from other sites, not its own site.

      --
      You just got troll'd!
    6. Re:"Search engine"? by 77Punker · · Score: 3, Informative

      People use Google or Youtube when they're not sure where to look. grep is for people who have a specific set of data to search through and need a line containing a specific term.

    7. Re:"Search engine"? by 2nd+Post! · · Score: 2, Funny

      Google is also a website with a search facility.

      --

      GPL Deconstructed
    8. Re:"Search engine"? by 2nd+Post! · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Only true if Amazon traffic was higher than YouTube traffic :)

      Essentially the point is that more people are searching within YouTube for videos than within Yahoo!, for everything. Which says something about marketshare. Even Amazon is listed, and it ranks below Microsoft's Live search site.

      --

      GPL Deconstructed
    9. Re:"Search engine"? by Rary · · Score: 5, Insightful

      youtube is just a website with a search facility.

      Google is also a website with a search facility.

      YouTube is a website with the ability to search its content. Google is a website with the ability to search other sites' content.

      Basically, Google is a search engine, and YouTube has a search engine.

      --

      "You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -- Albert Einstein

    10. Re:"Search engine"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well, technically you also perform an internal search on Google: it's a website with the ability to search its content, its content being a huge index. Then it presents the search results as links to other websites.

      (Not actually making any point, just mocking the GP's overly-literal interpretation ;)

    11. Re:"Search engine"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Car analogy please.

    12. Re:"Search engine"? by xstonedogx · · Score: 1

      Yahoo! has more people using its search feature.

      YouTube has more searches taking place.

      There may be some correlation between number of searches and market share, but that's not necessarily so. You could have what the submitter would call the "#1 search engine" by having a script query your servers 24/7, but if you were the only unique visitor your market share would be nil.

    13. Re:"Search engine"? by sectionboy · · Score: 1

      Now you know where the "g" in google came from.

    14. Re:"Search engine"? by ravergonemad · · Score: 3, Informative

      True, a better comparison to Youtube would be wiki, when you already know where the content is, but need to filter it.

    15. Re:"Search engine"? by Grimbleton · · Score: 1

      YouTube's search is like looking through the user manual, Google is like browsing at a dealership.

    16. Re:"Search engine"? by HappySmileMan · · Score: 3, Informative

      Neither grep nor YouTube are search engines, in the accepted sense of the word. YouTube employs a search engine to return results, but it isn't one in its own right.

      Well then the search engine Youtube employs has overtaken Yahoo.

      This argument was a waste of my screen space, moreso than the very debatedly inaccurate summary

    17. Re:"Search engine"? by spectral · · Score: 1

      Except that amazon is listed right there in the article, at the very bottom (168 million). This is a misleading headline anyway, since it's Google, then YouTube/Other Google Sites, then All Yahoo Sites. Who knows, maybe all those searches were on google maps and gmail?

    18. Re:"Search engine"? by Arrakiv · · Score: 1

      Yeah, I have a hard time considering YouTube as a 'search engine', but I must admit that YouTube having more searches traffic through it than Yahoo is somewhat surprising. Even if it is /. and I shouldn't be doing that, the article is pretty interesting.

      --
      Community Manager - Bigfoot Networks
    19. Re:"Search engine"? by Sophira · · Score: 1

      Have you ever done a grep -r /, grep -r ~, or similar?

      Because if not, you're illustrating the GP's point. You know what files you're looking in, but you don't know what file something is in. You're searching a specific set of data, in this case, files that reside in a particular place.

      Similarly with locate. Your set of data is a list of pathnames, and not only that, but pathnames that have already been filtered by the locate command. Again, you know you want to look in a specific place - a list of pathnames.

      The for/wget/grep is more like the search engine, but even then it's a non-typical use, analogous to using the site: operator in Google, which most people don't.

    20. Re:"Search engine"? by JWSmythe · · Score: 1

      Some people would say that it's like comparing apples and oranges. I think it's more like apples and watermelons.

          My apples are round, and juicy.

          But your watermelon is bigger and juicier. It doesn't make your watermelon the better apple.

          Youtube is primarily driven by its searches. That's why it has more search traffic. It's not off-site traffic though. Google and Yahoo (generally) link to offsite resources, not to their own content on their own site 100% of the time.

          Searching for "Microsoft", "Chevrolet", or "Pizza Hut" on Youtube never show me a way to their web sites. You can't order a pizza through the search results on Youtube. :) You can see some almost entertaining ads though.

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KdK9j-J4au4

      --
      Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
    21. Re:"Search engine"? by mbarkhau · · Score: 1

      Basically, Google is a search engine, and YouTube has a search engine.

      I've always preferred encapsulation over inheritance.

    22. Re:"Search engine"? by Korin43 · · Score: 1

      Actually his market share would be 1/(number of people who use search engines), which is slightly larger than 0.

    23. Re:"Search engine"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Actually his market share would be 1/(number of people who use search engines), which is slightly larger than 0.

      A script isn't a person. The market share is still nil.

    24. Re:"Search engine"? by Tetsujin · · Score: 1

      Well, Youtube's search feature is like a car, and Google's search feature is like some other, different kind of car...

      I always wanted to see what would happen if Gary Numan got into the Car Analogy routine...
      in cars...

      --
      Bow-ties are cool.
    25. Re:"Search engine"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Grep does not Search It filters a dataset
      ls|grep home

      slocate package or indexing software is closer to a search engine.
      locate home

    26. Re:"Search engine"? by endymion.nz · · Score: 1

      fail

      --
      mediocrity rules, man
    27. Re:"Search engine"? by Sophira · · Score: 1

      I wasn't personally suggesting that YouTube was a search engine. In fact, I agree with you that it's a specific dataset. I was merely responding to the idea that grep would normally be used in a non-specific dataset. I don't believe many people normally do a grep -r / - since you do, that's a bad assumption on my part, and I apologise. But I think you get the rest of what I was saying.

    28. Re:"Search engine"? by trentrez · · Score: 2, Insightful

      The real deal is this:

      Google's search scope is "the internet"

      Youtube's search scope is "videos uploaded to it's site"

      How you define what 'is' a search engine or what 'has' a search engine is moot if you talk about the 'scope' in which a search is performed and then it's 'method'.

      If I created a search "engine" thats scope was the internet and it used the same 'method' as google then it would give me the same results as google. Same argument goes for Youtube.

      Youtube just happens to be a special case in that it is a search on a scope of video files which are a subset of it's own website. IE it searches specific conent uploaded to it's site which allows it to get added meta information from an otherwise visual medium, IE how does Google know what's in a video.. Youtube know because it asks you to tag it.

      Same with Slashdot's search, It is a search on it's own content, submissions, comments etc.

      Just because Google can search "outside of it's internal scope" (however that may be defined) doesn't make it any different or doesn't make Youtube any less of a search engine.

      The point thus stands that this is pretty damn spectacular that Youtube which is only searching a small subset of data is being used more than Yahoo which is used to access in theory the same or a similar scope to Google, ie the internet.

      How accurate the method on counting how you rate Youtube higher than Yahoo is, is open for debate. However assuming they are using the same metric they always did, according to that metric- Yahoo was above Youtube, and now it isn't. I would therefore say this is significant even if it is (without knowing exact details on how the ranking works) potentially somewhat crude.

      --
      Incite ICT - IT Support London
    29. Re:"Search engine"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Well then the search engine Youtube employs has overtaken Yahoo.

      Considering who owns YouTube, would this be... Google? ;-)

    30. Re:"Search engine"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Maybe they're thinking about it this way:

      I can install YouTube's search as a search engine plugin in my web browser. (I also have one installed for Amazon, for Wikipedia, for the IMDB, and even one for the OED because I'm geeky like that and my workplace has a site license.)

      Technically, that could mean that any site with a plugin at http://mycroft.mozdev.org/ could be listed.

    31. Re:"Search engine"? by AmberBlackCat · · Score: 1

      What's wild about that is, it seems the best way to create a YouTube object is to create a YouTube class that has a member object that is a Google. So while the object oriented programming Google is a small piece of a YouTube, the real life YouTube is a small piece of Google. It's time for me to get away from the computer.

    32. Re:"Search engine"? by Ghubi · · Score: 1

      The point thus stands that this is pretty damn spectacular that Youtube which is only searching a small subset of data is being used more than Yahoo which is used to access in theory the same or a similar scope to Google, ie the internet.

      Well said.

    33. Re:"Search engine"? by whereiswaldo · · Score: 1

      YouTube employs a search engine to return results, but it isn't one in its own right.

      Google search also employs a search engine to return results. Is it because YouTube only returns results that it hosts? Perhaps if it also included 3rd party results it would be more of a search engine to you? That sort of makes sense, but it's a gray area IMO.

      Ok, following that logic, if grep returned results from other people's computers would it be considered a search engine? Does response time play into the classification as a search engine?

    34. Re:"Search engine"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Google follows Inheritance
      You tube follows Encapsulation

    35. Re:"Search engine"? by rtb61 · · Score: 1

      However in this case by doing a comparisson and apples and oranges search they are merely obfuscating the output. So if you want to comapre google hits to Yahoo hits, you really have to take into account the other activities that Yahoo does that google does not, for example from the same site, http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=2504, so Yahoo does browser gaming and google does not.

      Also in another article http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=1991 there is this interesting bit "Search term categorization: Developed jointly by Google and comScore with tens of thousands of queries categorized. comScore, in conjunction with Google, categorized the search terms", perhaps google and comScore might just be working a little too closely together for impartial output. Not implying that comScore sells a lot or reports to google but that google is likely to have a bias in creating test metrics where it knows it has an advantage and where there is an enormous financial impact in selling an perception of market advantage.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
    36. Re:"Search engine"? by totally+bogus+dude · · Score: 0

      Is it because YouTube only returns results that it hosts?

      Pretty much. Basically we don't tend to think of site-specific search as being a "search engine" in the way that Google or Yahoo! or MSN Windows Live Search (or whatever the fuck it's called these days) is a "search engine".

      The main differentiator I guess is that a real "search engine" indexes materials which aren't under the direct control of the operator of the search engine. The distinction is meaningful because it's a fair bit easier to provide a useful search facility over data which is under your complete control, than it is to provide a useful search facility over a whole bunch of other people's data.

      Another distinction could be that sending people to other's people sites for information is a specialised field of endeavour. It's useful for just about everyone to provide relevant search results for information on their own site; but a search engine is specifically trying to get people to go to other websites. (Replace "website" as appropriate; search engines aren't specific to the web.)

      Ok, following that logic, if grep returned results from other people's computers would it be considered a search engine?

      That probably depends if the other people's computers were under your control or not. I wouldn't be inclined to call it a "search engine" if it was also finding information in files mounted via NFS or something. Although if it was an ad-hoc network of other people's computers (e.g. at a big LAN party) then it would probably be considered as being a specialised search engine, like those on some P2P networks.

      Does response time play into the classification as a search engine?

      I don't think so; that would more play into the classification as being a "good" search engine.

    37. Re:"Search engine"? by Bios_Hakr · · Score: 1

      I rarely use google to find videos. First off, then index sites like stupidvids.cn that are hosted on 56k dialup accounts routed through bangladesh.

      I go to youtube because it's a known variable. They have just about everything and it's usually faster than my DSL. If I can't find it there, I'll use google as a fallback.

      --
      I'd rather you do it wrong, than for me to have to do it at all.
    38. Re:"Search engine"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Any person who contradicts themselves doesn't contradict themselves, is I think what you were trying to say.

    39. Re:"Search engine"? by jonadab · · Score: 1

      That was my first thought, too. YouTube has a search feature, but it isn't what we generally think of when we say search engine". Usually when we talk about search engines we mean general-purpose web search engines, which index and search other sites. To my knowledge, YouTube does not compete in that space.

      --
      Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
    40. Re:"Search engine"? by jonadab · · Score: 1

      You're conflating two different meanings of the phrase "search engine".

      YouTube employs a special-purpose internal search-engine that greps through its database of YouTube videos to return results that are YouTube videos, exclusively. In other words, YouTube is only a search engine in the most general sense, the sense in which Lexis Nexis and Ebsco and Encyclopedia Britannica and Wikipedia and Novelist and Gale and SIRS and Perlmonks are also search engines. This is NOT what people usually mean when they compare and rank "search engines".

      Yahoo (err, actually, the Yahoo! service that people generally mean when they say Yahoo in this context) is a general-purpose web search engine, which is what people usually mean when they talk about and rank "search engines". It also employs a search engine (in the above technical sense) internally, to grep through its database of URLs. But the results it returns are not internal proprietary exclusive content stored at Yahoo. The results from Yahoo are of the same type as the results from the main Google web search, i.e., they are links to external content made available by other publishers all over the world.

      --
      Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
    41. Re:"Search engine"? by jonadab · · Score: 1

      > Just because Google can search "outside of it's internal scope" (however that may be defined)
      > doesn't make it any different or doesn't make Youtube any less of a search engine.

      In the technical computer-science jargon sense, the Yahoo web search, the Google web search, and the YouTube internal search all operate because, under the hood, there's a "search engine".

      But that is not what people generally mean when they compare and rank "search engines". Generally when we say "search engines" we're usually talking about web sites that exist for the purpose of allowing people to search the web at large. This is technically a narrower and different meaning for the phrase "search engine", but it's the only one most people know, especially outside of the field of information technology. And YouTube isn't one.

      --
      Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
    42. Re:"Search engine"? by Grimbleton · · Score: 1

      Okay, YOU do better.

    43. Re:"Search engine"? by Kashgarinn · · Score: 1

      How the hell did you get modded insightful? A search engine is a search engine, no matter whether you limit results to one domain or a million.

      And yes, any site with a search feature is using a search engine, why is that so hard to understand?

    44. Re:"Search engine"? by Rary · · Score: 1

      But scope is precisely the point. Although there are many "search engines" used on various different websites, when people talk about ranking "Search Engines", they generally mean websites that have a web scoped search engine.

      In fact, as I pointed out in another post, the article in question doesn't actually call YouTube a "Search Engine"; only the Slashdot headline does. The article first lists a ranking of "Search Engines", which does not include YouTube, then lists a separate ranking of overall "search activity", which includes searches with narrower scopes, such as YouTube, Amazon, MySpace, etc.

      I agree that it is nevertheless interesting that YouTube's narrowly scoped searches outnumber Yahoo's web scoped searches -- if that is actually the case, which it may not be, as the article lumps all other Google-owned search properties, excluding their main web search, in with YouTube.

      --

      "You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -- Albert Einstein

    45. Re:"Search engine"? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      No "find" is.

  3. YouTube is not a search engine by alex_vegas · · Score: 5, Insightful

    People who search on yahoo are not looking to stay at yahoo. People who search at youtube are looking to stay at youtube. This story is bogus.

    1. Re:YouTube is not a search engine by ajs · · Score: 4, Funny

      I actually search for all of my Web needs on YouTube first. I find that it really reduces the number of Wikipedia links I have to surf past ;-)

    2. Re:YouTube is not a search engine by gangien · · Score: 1

      And the fact that it might not technically be a search engine, makes exactly what bogus?

    3. Re:YouTube is not a search engine by Facegarden · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The story isn't bogus... If a general purpose search site that searches the whole web, and used to be number one, now gets fewer searches than a single-purpose video search site, it really underscores how low yahoo has fallen!
      -Taylor

      --
      Worldwide Military budgets: $2100 billion. Worldwide Space Exploration budgets: $38 billion. Really, world? Really?
    4. Re:YouTube is not a search engine by Rary · · Score: 4, Informative

      People who search on yahoo are not looking to stay at yahoo. People who search at youtube are looking to stay at youtube. This story is bogus.

      It should be pointed out that the article doesn't call YouTube a search engine. It lists rankings of the 5 major search engines, then it does a separate ranking of "search activity", which includes any kind of searching within a website, and includes such searchable sites as MapQuest, MySpace, and Amazon.

      --

      "You cannot simultaneously prevent and prepare for war." -- Albert Einstein

    5. Re:YouTube is not a search engine by marcosdumay · · Score: 2, Funny

      You also can get all that usefull info available at the user comments.

      --
      Rethinking email
    6. Re:YouTube is not a search engine by eihab · · Score: 1

      And the fact that it might not technically be a search engine, makes exactly what bogus?

      The claim that "YouTube Passes Yahoo As #2 Search Engine".

      (Posted without RTFA because it sounds trollish anyway)

      --
      If you can't mod them join them.
    7. Re:YouTube is not a search engine by EvilGoodGuy · · Score: 1

      According to Wikipedia (Found via their search engine):

      "A search engine is an information retrieval system designed to help find information stored on a computer system. Search engines help to minimize the time required to find information and the amount of information which must be consulted, akin to other techniques for managing information overload.[citation needed] The most public, visible form of a search engine is a Web search engine which searches for information on the World Wide Web." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Search_engine_(computing)

      So define search engine as you like, but in a general sense you are wrong. (Shouldn't need the Wikipedia quote to show this.) Nowhere in the words search engine is it implied that you want to leave your current site.

      What you're arguing is what is called a Web Search Engine, this limits it to engines that search the web instead of a site.

      Now I realize that Wikipedia isn't the greatest source for information. But it makes the point clear enough that there is more than one type of search engine. Some more specific, and some more broad, than others.

    8. Re:YouTube is not a search engine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      You're mixing is-a and has-a relationships here... Yahoo is-a search engine, while YouTube has-a search engine (no one denied that). According to your reasoning, every site that provides a search box is-a search engine.

    9. Re:YouTube is not a search engine by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      At least for this week, I mean is it news every day when theres change in leagues of this?

      Plus this could easily be an M$ led story to continue to devalue Yahoo.. we should all go do a search on yahoo now just to keep the playing fields fair.

    10. Re:YouTube is not a search engine by jonadab · · Score: 1

      It doesn't get fewer searches. It gets less *traffic*.

      Well, duh. Yahoo is serving out (carefully HTML-formatted) lists of URLs. YouTube is serving out videos. Which one do you suppose is generating more bytes of traffic?

      --
      Cut that out, or I will ship you to Norilsk in a box.
    11. Re:YouTube is not a search engine by EvilGoodGuy · · Score: 1

      Good point, wtb /.goggles

    12. Re:YouTube is not a search engine by Facegarden · · Score: 1

      It doesn't get fewer searches. It gets less *traffic*.

      Well, duh. Yahoo is serving out (carefully HTML-formatted) lists of URLs. YouTube is serving out videos. Which one do you suppose is generating more bytes of traffic?

      I suppose that depends on how they define traffic? I didn't RTFA but i'd be curious...
      -Taylor

      --
      Worldwide Military budgets: $2100 billion. Worldwide Space Exploration budgets: $38 billion. Really, world? Really?
  4. Google Gobles up the .... by zenmaster666 · · Score: 0

    Looking at the stats there was no significant increase in Youtube's traffic, just a drop in Yahoo's traffic which was obviously due to Google's [double team tag] ever growing hold on the search market.
    But is it even fair to compare Youtube and Yahoo?

    1. Re:Google Gobles up the .... by Missing_dc · · Score: 1

      But is it even fair to compare Youtube and Yahoo?

      Well, they both start with "Y" and contain the same vowel sound...

      --
      How amazed would you be to suddenly find that you just forgot what I wrote and you needed to reread my post.... again.
  5. Not a search engine by Lost+Race · · Score: 0, Redundant

    Youtube is not a search engine. It is a video hosting site.

  6. Competition by Wiarumas · · Score: 4, Insightful

    But is YouTube in competition with Yahoo? This is apples and oranges. Nothing to see here folks, move along.

    --
    I will bend like a reed in the wind.
    1. Re:Competition by philspear · · Score: 2, Funny

      Wait, are you saying that youtube is going to start making their own brand of computers called "Oranges" to compete with macs!?!?

    2. Re:Competition by hansraj · · Score: 5, Funny

      But is YouTube in competition with Yahoo? This is apples and oranges.

      I say that comparing the comparison of yahoo with youtube to that of apples and oranges is comparing apples with oranges!

      -------
      I wish I had something useful to say.

    3. Re:Competition by jonbryce · · Score: 2, Funny

      No, because France Telecom might object.

    4. Re:Competition by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Yes they are in competition. The more time they spend on YouTube, the less time they spend on Yahoo.

      That's traffic, trends, internet usage, whatever... and Yahoo better not let these things slip by if it wants to continue to be some type of leader in this industry. I'm not saying that they should produce something similar to YouTube and try to fight it out, but it better do something to attract those customers.

    5. Re:Competition by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      And I would say that comparing the comparison of Yahoo with Youtube to that of apples and oranges is comparing Apple and Oranje.

    6. Re:Competition by dontmakemethink · · Score: 1

      One of the key sources of revenue of search engines is the market indicators collected by recording and indexing the search patterns of consumers. In that regard, YouTube and Yahoo are in direct competition. Advertisers can research and target fertile markets just as precisely with the market info gathered from either site.

      I remember reading back in the early 80's that Road & Track magazine made more from selling its subscriber list than from advertising in the magazine itself. I inquired about it when I kept getting gold Mastercard applications when I was 8 years old. And that was over 25 years ago. Air Miles, credit cards, digital TV (they can now watch what you watch), possibly even DNS servers all harvest and sell such information. There's mad money in it.

      --

      War as we knew it was obsolete
      Nothing could beat complete denial
      - Emily Haines
  7. Without porn?!? HOW??? by philspear · · Score: 5, Funny

    I'm inclined to doubt this. Youtube doesn't host any porn. That's easily 70% of the internet right there.

    You mean to tell me that people are now more interested in videos of people getting hit in the nuts and TV clips that are not SNL or daily show than they are in sex? LIES!

  8. What? by clarkkent09 · · Score: 4, Insightful

    When I am on Youtube I typically perform several searches and stay on Youtube the whole time. On the other hand when I go to a search engine I typically perform one search and click on one of the results and leave the search site. As somebody else pointed out the media company bots must be constantly searching Youtube for certain keywords to identify copyright violations. The whole comparison is nonsense.

    Last I heard Yahoo still beats both Google and Youtube in total number of unique visitors and that is the stat that matters to advertisers.

    --
    Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
  9. Re:Without porn?!? HOW??? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Informative

    Youtube may not host "porn" but with the right search terms you can find some pretty porny stuff.

  10. Re:Without porn?!? HOW??? by Wescotte · · Score: 5, Informative

    There is a special keyword to use on youtube to get to the porn section. You must not have elite access. Just email them asking for elite access with a hacker resume of sorts and you should be able to gain access. Just keep it on the down low though.

  11. Regulatory Problems? by ushering05401 · · Score: 1

    How did all these people end up on YouTube in the first place? What search engines feed the most people onto the site?

    Does a mechanism even exist for gauging the objectivity of search results?

    I use Google apps, gmail, etc.. but I am worried about the changes that take place when any company gets too deeply entrenched at the top of their niche. I would feel better about Google if their side projects were doing a little less well.

     

    1. Re:Regulatory Problems? by clarkkent09 · · Score: 3, Interesting

      How did all these people end up on YouTube in the first place? What search engines feed the most people onto the site?

      That's a good point. For most google searches these days I tend to get something like this:

      1. Wikipedia entry
      2,3 youtube videos
      4. google news
      5.... everything else, still sprinkled with videos, mostly youtube

      If google owned Wikipedia then most of their top search results would be leading back to google sites.

      --
      Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
    2. Re:Regulatory Problems? by ushering05401 · · Score: 1

      Just riffing on the concept...

      Search is weird because it currently can't work by returning 'objective' results.

      Engines get ahead by returning the 'best' results. With 'best' being defined by the wisdom of the crowds, and the wisdom of the crowds being heavily influenced by advertising, and the advertising ultimately paying for the search infrastructure that provides the results...

      Who is going to regulate this industry? Not the people in power right now, or in the immediate future from what I can tell (my apologies to Obama).

       

    3. Re:Regulatory Problems? by ushering05401 · · Score: 1

      *ack* Last line should read "who is capable of regulating this industry? Not the people in power..."

      Apologies.

    4. Re:Regulatory Problems? by 2nd+Post! · · Score: 1

      Why is it important to regulate the industry at all?

      Other than for malicious intent I mean. If people want to find what other people think, what's wrong with this setup?

      --

      GPL Deconstructed
    5. Re:Regulatory Problems? by Mprx · · Score: 1

      Youtube is useful for some types of searches. Eg. I wanted to know if pikes bit humans, and I assumed that if they did somebody would have recorded it and uploaded it to Youtube. Youtube search "pike bite" and there it is, video proof of pikes biting humans. That is much better than trying to interpret all the dubious fish stories you'll get with the same web search.

  12. You just gotta BELIEVE that Ballmer's by davidsyes · · Score: 1

    throwing chairs like never, EVER before....

    (Wait, what's that rumble i hear from up north....SHIT, he's activating various fault lines in California and the West Coast....)

    --
    Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
  13. Re:Without porn?!? HOW??? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Informative? Even the modding is funny!

  14. not two search engines by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Among other things, this means that Google now owns both of the top two search engines.

    No, they just use their search engine on two websites, in a different configuration. Google gave YouTube the search engine, the original one before the takeover was replaced (see the Google talks).

  15. when is a site indexer a search engine? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    How is a closed environment a comparable search engine?
    does Youtube search anything other than youtube?

    Just asking for some logic, otherwise I'll start a search engine at my house and have it search itself until it's #1!!!!!!!

  16. In other news... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    CNN.com announced today that it had proudly claimed the #1 news search engine spot.

  17. Wrong wrong and wrong by ohtani · · Score: 3, Informative

    The article is being read incorrectly. "YouTube/All Other" is surpassing Yahoo!, meaning anything that is part of Google! could be included, such as the book, code and news searches. Or groups. Or Picasa. All combined.

    Take a look at Microsoft's stats. It's split into Live and Microsoft.com/All Other

    --
    Pancakes. Oh I blew it.
  18. Not beaten by YouTube by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    From TFA:
    Search Queries (MM)
    Google Sites: 10,158
        Google: 7,594
        YouTube/All Other: 2,564
    Yahoo! Sites: 2,427
        Yahoo!: 2,393
        All Other: 34

    So Yahoo search got beat by YouTube searches PLUS searches at every other site that Google owns.

    Someone needs to learn to read charts.

  19. Re:Without porn?!? HOW??? by krakround · · Score: 0, Redundant

    "I'm inclined to doubt this. Youtube doesn't host any porn. That's easily 70% of the internet right there.

    You mean to tell me that people are now more interested in videos of people getting hit in the nuts and TV clips that are not SNL or daily show than they are in sex? LIES!"

    Please don't suggest this. I wake up every day pretending that I don't live in "Idiocracy" and you are making harder and harder to maintain that illusion.

  20. Re:Without porn?!? HOW??? by melstav · · Score: 5, Informative

    If porn is what you're looking for, there are sites very similar to YouTube where that's all they do.

    http://www.youporn.com
    http://www.pornotube.com

    Just to provide two examples.

  21. question by acdc_rules · · Score: 1

    if you are in a race and you overtake the guy in second place, what position are u in?

    1. Re:question by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      if you are in a race and you overtake the guy in second place, what position are u in?

      Second place.

      Although in this case Google owns both websites so they're in first and second.

  22. Youtube isnt a search engine. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    google is a search engine. youtube.com utilizes google as their search engine.

  23. Que? by sexconker · · Score: 1

    When I search on google, doesn't that automatically pass through to youtube in many cases (and thus count as a search for youtube)?

  24. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  25. So that means... by nog_lorp · · Score: 2, Funny

    Google is number 2 to Google? How long till that new upstart 'Google' takes number 3?

    1. Re:So that means... by owlnation · · Score: 1

      Not long. And neither returns great results these days. Just further proof that Google seriously needs competition. Why has it been 10 years since there was any major breakthrough in "search"?

    2. Re:So that means... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      Why has it been 10 years since there was any major breakthrough in "search"?

      What kind of a question is that? Are we due for one? I wasn't aware that there was a schedule for these things!

  26. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 3, Funny

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  27. Not Suprising..... by IHC+Navistar · · Score: 3, Interesting

    This is no suprise..... Yahoo has long allowed their service to degrade in favor of profit. The thing that made Google *the* search engine when they came out was that the page consisted of just a logo that said GOOGLE and a field to enter your search into. If you wanted info on other services GOOGLE had to offer, all you did was click a little hyperlink and you would then be taken to another page with the services on it.

    Yahoo, on the other hand, crammed their page with every advertisement, product plug, sales pitch, and "junk" shopping service they could possibly fit onto the page.

    Google is a simple, easy to use search engine, and it is absolutely no suprise it has become as giant as it is. This is mainly due to the simple, uncluttered sales-pitch free interface. The simple interface ade people want to use it, thus generating more money, thus allowing it to grow bigger.

    Yahoo has turned itself into the America Online of serch engines: Nothing but advertisements, sales pitches, product tie-ins, marketing, and "junk" services.

    --
    Knowing Google's lust for data collection, the Soviet Union is still alive and well inside the psyche of Sergey Brin....
    1. Re:Not Suprising..... by Futil3 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      A picture says more than a thousand words...

    2. Re:Not Suprising..... by protohiro1 · · Score: 1

      search.yahoo.com. The yahoo home page is not a search engine, its a portal.

      --
      Sig removed because it was obnoxious
    3. Re:Not Suprising..... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      search.yahoo.com is actually quite clean, and would be considered their search portal. Google also has google.com/ig, and it's not exactly clean. It just so happens that yahoo made the mistake of not having their clean search portal on their base page, and having a yahoo.com/ig for all the other crap.

    4. Re:Not Suprising..... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

      The thing that made Google *the* search engine when they came out was that the page consisted of just a logo that said GOOGLE and a field to enter your search into.

      That's just part of the story. While it's I agree a very important part, another aspect that you're missing is that their results were good. While yahoo may have caught up in the quality of their search results (first by using Google as a backend, and later by buying Inktomi), at the time that Google came out, most other search engines just kind of sucked in what they returned, and Google was way better.

    5. Re:Not Suprising..... by uigrad_2000 · · Score: 1

      A picture says more than a thousand words...

      yet it ignores the obvious:

      ysearch.com

      --
      Free unix account: freeshell.org
    6. Re:Not Suprising..... by RpiMatty · · Score: 1

      The problem is you have to type search.yahoo.com instead of just typing yahoo and pressing Ctrl+Enter.

      On google, the default page is bare-bones, and you have to go to a different page to get the portal view.
      On Yahoo!, the default page is the portal, and you have to go to a different page to get the bare-bones search.

      Right now on www.yahoo.com I see no way to get to search.yahoo.com

  28. Re:Without porn?!? HOW??? by marcosdumay · · Score: 2, Funny

    It's the best part of the joke. How many resumées would the YouTube admins get if it was modded Funny? And informative?

    --
    Rethinking email
  29. Email by marcosdumay · · Score: 1

    "How did all these people end up on YouTube in the first place?"

    Email

    --
    Rethinking email
  30. Re:AC Passes Gas As He Gets First Post by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Bad news: you didn't get first post.

    Even worse news: that wasn't a fart.

  31. Re:"Search engine"? Totally.. Tu.. by davidsyes · · Score: 1

    Tubular!

    Now, we have some validation of the Internets being full of pipes and tubes!

    --
    Previously: "Linux... Toward the Sunrise..." Now: "Linux... Toward the-- No, now, part of Every Sunrise"
  32. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 0

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  33. Re:Without porn?!? HOW??? by clarkkent09 · · Score: 1

    Not really similar. On youtube anyone can post. On those two sites only paid advertisers post.

    --
    Negative moral value of force outweighs the positive value of good intentions.
  34. Re:Without porn?!? HOW??? by cong06 · · Score: 0, Redundant

    I love how you got modded "Informative" lol

  35. Re:Without porn?!? HOW??? by philspear · · Score: 1

    ...plus it's PORN! WOOOO!

  36. You used the wrong URL by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0

    Yahoo! Search does not seem too different to Google to me. The correct URL would be: http://search.yahoo.com

  37. Statistical uncertainty by tepples · · Score: 1

    if you were the only unique visitor your market share would be nil.

    Actually his market share would be 1/(number of people who use search engines), which is slightly larger than 0.

    Grandparent's point is that even if a fraction "is slightly larger than 0", it might still be within statistical uncertainty of 0.

  38. Limit of 32 words per query by tepples · · Score: 1

    I actually search for all of my Web needs on YouTube first. I find that it really reduces the number of Wikipedia links I have to surf past ;-)

    So does -site:wikipedia.org. The trouble is that once you blacklist enough sites from your queries, such as Elsevier, Wiley, and the other paywalls that fill result pages, you start running into Google's limit of 32 words per query.

  39. Here's the keyword (NSFW) by tepples · · Score: 1

    There is a special keyword to use on youtube to get to the porn section.

    Here is the keyword (not safe for work): YouPorn

  40. Comparing portal to search or apples to oranges? by tepples · · Score: 1

    A picture says more than a thousand words...

    All that tells me is that Yahoo! puts its portal on www.$domain.com/ and Google puts its search on www.$domain.com/. Compare Yahoo! Search to Google Search, or Yahoo! Portal to Google Portal, and it's much less lopsided.