ScreamapillarAPI t1_isezc90 wrote
Will it not display recommended videos with the search results. This is the one thing that's seriously annoying me about YouTube these days. You want to search something about a general topic and maybe if youre lucky the first 2 videos are something related to what you search but then you have tonnes of completely unrelated videos based on your past viewership. It's so annoying they essentially blended in your content home feed with the search despite being two completely different features with different use cases in mind. I don't understand how an Alphabet company can screw up the act of searching this bad.
FaryGagan t1_isf7q2a wrote
It drives me crazy too. Alphabet is in the advertising business now though, right? They have no stake in YouTube's functionality for the user, aside from delivering the advertisements they're paid to deliver. Why prioritize search functionality when it doesn't directly help bring in the money?
YouTube was content from the people and for the people. Now it's content from corporations and for corporations.
ScreamapillarAPI t1_isfbxwu wrote
I get that and all and who knows maybe I'm outside whatever target user YouTube is capturing. It's just now it's seriously getting in the way of useability to a point it's actually making me disengage with the platform more often instead of keeping me glued on the site for prolonged periods. I rarely engage with recommended videos because YouTubes algorithm gets it wrong like 7/10 times for me and spews garbage at me (I delete my history and start from scratch sometimes to alleviate this).
If they want to keep me engaged when using search specifically then they should simply provide me content that I asked for in my search query and then after finding something and click to watch it, from there let the recommendations flow in to keep me clicking. I'm not going to be able to watch their ads for products Im never going to buy if they aren't giving me what I want through search easily.
It just seems so ass backward to me. Do the product owners/designers at YouTube believe the majority of it's user base are that easily distractable like we all have ADD. Where they will use search with the explicit goal of finding something specific only to immediately abandon that goal 2 seconds later after seeing something unrelated but from a creator they watched before.
This stuff seems like it's from a relatively newer update and as someone who constantly works with UX designers and love poking holes in their ideas in order to get to the best solution. I would love to somehow see the usage analytics data from this update on the search feature because I can't be the only one finding this completely unintuitive and disengaging.
FaryGagan t1_isfhmse wrote
I hear you and completely agree.
I think it just matters a lot less to Alphabet if users like you or me are satisfied with search functionality, because we don't exactly have a choice when it comes to video sharing/viewing... unless it's on ANOTHER corporate owned platform that will inevitably shift more and more towards appeasing advertisers (such as reddit- we're seeing this site drive ads and content consumption more and more each passing year).
So what I'm saying is I'm with you- we used to have a BEAUTIFUL set of tools built up via the internet, but they were scooped up by systems that are designed to turn a profit. Good for business, bad for progress and growth. Maybe some people like that, but I hate it.
Tuss36 t1_isfpvnu wrote
I share in this frustration. If I didn't click that video they've been shelling at me for the last three days on my homepage, I'm not gonna suddenly be interested when I'm searching for something different. Especially when it's a video I just finished, or clicked away with ten seconds left because the creator puts credits in.
The closest thing they've got to a "reasonable" thing in that field is how, on the recommended list that mimics your mess of a search result page, there's a list of tags on the top. If you click the one labeled "Related", it basically narrows the list down to what it should look like, rather than just your latest subscription feed, though they might sneak in there anyways but at least it's something. Though sometimes the tag doesn't show up so even that's not foolproof.
dbxp t1_isfmyo7 wrote
At this point I'm starting to think it needs a third party index which provides search over the biggest channels and just links out to YouTube for the content.
Alxssandro t1_isfdsyi wrote
>maybe if youre lucky the first 2 videos are something related to what you search but then you have tonnes of completely unrelated videos based on your past viewership
It's worse now, literally for EVERY search I make there are 3 unrelated videos, usually those that are trending, before I can find the pertinent ones. I don't get it, it's just annoying.
Vicious_Hydragyrum t1_isf5o7a wrote
Open a new window in incognito mode then search on YouTube, thus it will see you with no past history and no cookies etc...
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