Web Search–Yahoo
Yahoo Launches Revamped Video Search Site
Set to go at midnight on Thursday (however the new site is now live) Yahoo has launched a revamped video search site. Until now, Yahoo Video offered (and still does) video content from partners (iFilm for example) as well as video its crawler finds on the open web. Overall, lots of new stuff for Yahoo but not much that we haven’t seen elsewhere from other players.
What’s New/Different
+ Yahoo will now host and stream your video for free (ala Google Video and YouTube) via Yahoo Studio. Yahoo will host videos (wmv, flv, asf, qt, mov, mpg, or avi) up to 100MB in size. You can add a description/transcript, keywords (you choose) and place the video in up to six categories.
+ If the video is not hosted by Yahoo, Yahoo Video links you to the site. In other words, the content remains on a non-Yahoo server. If it’s video from another Yahoo site (like music or sports) you’re taken to that site to view.
+ Results pages include a static image from the video.
+ Featured videos are linked on the Yahoo Video Home Page. A daily archive is also available.
+ Sort “top picks” found on the home page by popularity, categories, or tags (right now the most popular tag is “fun.” Not sure how useful that tag will be.
+ Results pages offer a bit more metadata (duration, source, etc.). The rest of the metadata (directly next to the clip) was of little value when I ran several searches. That’s not an issue for Yahoo but for the content producer.
+ User reviews and tags
+ Bookmark and share videos with friends (similar to what you can do with Yahoo 360).
+ Advanced search interface has not changed either in look or services.
+ Without the Safe Search active, lots of adult material.
+ Search results pages also contain “channels” which are series of videos from the same source or users that you can subscribe to.
+ Surprises? No way (at least I couldn’t find it) to browse videos by content partners. However, a search for CBS turns up several CBS “channels.” I also noticed a couple of IFilm channels. Also, I did not spot any mention of MediaRSS on either the site or the Yahoo Video help pages.
+ The Yahoo Video team has a blog. You’ll find it here on Yahoo 360.
+ Some results pages also contain Yahoo Shortcuts. For example, here you’ll see a shortcut for David Letterman via Yahoo TV.
Update: While the web hosting, tagging, and sharing services will be of value to many users, when it comes to pure video search, we’re still sticking with SearchforVideo.com.
Update 2: Some good news. Yahoo’s arrangement with Bloomberg Business News (via TVEyes.com) is still available. You can still keyword search words spoken on BBN and then watch the video clip on Yahoo. To limit your search to Bloomberg content, use the search site:tveyes.com foo>.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 31st, 2006 and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.