[HN Gopher] Ask HN: YouTube's website search isn't useful anymor...
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       Ask HN: YouTube's website search isn't useful anymore, is there an
       alternative?
        
       I can't seem to get good answers -- YouTube just shows mostly
       suggestions or things "I may like".  I was trying to find videos on
       specific IKEA furniture, but only got semi-related content.
       Interestingly enough, tiktok worked perfectly.  Curious if anyone
       has tried some other video platforms or video search tools.
        
       Author : aaronvg
       Score  : 19 points
       Date   : 2023-06-13 20:49 UTC (2 hours ago)
        
       | pyeri wrote:
       | Is it just me or YT also has this curious habit of pushing and
       | promoting electoral politics video content more and more despite
       | knowing full well that you don't watch such content?
        
         | JohnFen wrote:
         | I don't know if it's just you, but it hasn't been recommending
         | that stuff to me (thank goodness).
        
         | GravityisaHoax wrote:
         | I haven't seen any politics in my feed. The content it shows me
         | is fairly related to what I watch. I have used "Not interested"
         | and "Don't recommend channel" fairly often, so that probably
         | has helped.
        
         | SllX wrote:
         | In the past I aggressively made use of "Don't recommend this"
         | and "Not interested" options, along with deleting accidental
         | clicks from my history. I actually haven't had to do that in a
         | long time though and I'm not seeing any political videos at
         | all.
         | 
         | If you're not doing anything to curate your recommendations,
         | maybe give it a shot.
        
       | PCP7 wrote:
       | Havou tried pipe-viewer or piped/invidious?
        
       | adr1an wrote:
       | Invidious (alt. Frontend), NewPipe (android), FreeTube (PC). I
       | use those since long ago. There's LibRedirect web extension for
       | your web browser to find good invidious instances too. Cheers!
        
       | nevernothing wrote:
       | You can try to avoid irrelevant search results by using advanced
       | search filters like "intitle:" or "-" to exclude specific words.
       | 
       | I made a simple YouTube search form with search filters that work
       | well on YouTube: https://playlists.at/youtube/search/
        
         | Baljhin wrote:
         | Interesting; my experience has differed: I noticed since late
         | 2022 (last year) Youtube Search was essentially ignoring my
         | exact queries, giving only the first two or so result matching
         | the query - the rest of the results aren't even marginally
         | related.
         | 
         | Worse--this behavior continues, and has gotten so bad that
         | today searching is all but useless to me.
         | 
         | FYI- Your portal gave me good laugh on how it finds 'exact'
         | Titles:
         | https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=+intitle%3Afugi...
         | 
         | It works!
        
           | lurker919 wrote:
           | Exactly! It's so infuriating to search for a song cover and
           | instead of being able to discover indie musician covers or
           | rare live recordings, I get the studio version + 2 results,
           | then I get redirected to 'related' songs.
        
       | bawis wrote:
       | Try this github repo: https://github.com/tycrek/degoogle, there
       | is a Youtube section there.
        
       | weare138 wrote:
       | A couple of my goto options are DuckDuckGo's video search or
       | using the 'site:youtube.com' search operator trick for Google
       | Search. YouTube's search and recommendations are largely useless
       | now. YT just seems to endlessly shovel clickbait.
        
       | Baljhin wrote:
       | I luv-luv-luv userscript:
       | 
       | Block Youtube Users
       | 
       | > Hide videos of blacklisted users/channels and comments
       | 
       | https://greasyfork.org/scripts/11057
       | 
       | It's like GHHbD but from _within_ Youtube.
        
       | LeoWattenberg wrote:
       | If you go to Filter > Video, it gives you a more traditional
       | search.
       | 
       | Additionally, YouTube can be thought of as the second most used
       | search engine. Which in return means that the built-in search is
       | now up against Google, Bing and whatever else - and most other
       | engines can be restricted to just search YouTube using the site:
       | operator.
        
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       (page generated 2023-06-13 23:03 UTC)