YouTube Refining Search Tools

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The YouTube team has been brainstorming about ways to improve search. On the home page, videos serve up, algorithmically driven by the person's search habits. But what if the searches tied into the types of videos that friends might watch on social networks?

Considering the genres and videos that friends view across a variety of social networks might become a good indicator for the type of videos the person searching would like to see, too. Better yet, YouTube could push out suggestions based on a combination of preferences.

And while a YouTube spokesperson says these ideas are not a product roadmap for search, they do represent the creative thinking that spawns ideas at Google's video site. One of those ideas that launched in January could represent the future of search on YouTube. The YouTube Music Discovery Project and Playlist Creation Tool, dubbed Disco supports Vevo music videos, as well as those from Warner Music and others.

The music tool, Disco -- incubated in TestTube, YouTube's lab for experimental projects -- allows people to search for an artist's name or song in the search box. The person searching can add the returned results into their playlist, or save or delete songs already queued up in the list to play.

"Preliminary data shows the average session time has increased substantially since we launched Disco," the Google spokesperson says.

YouTube is working on bringing additional advertising into the Disco music player. It recently added the ability to buy the songs played through Amazon.com and Apple iTunes. The tool also offers ad overlays that serve up in the first 10 seconds, which YouTube added shortly after the tool's launch. Additional advertising models will emerge in the coming months.

Products like Disco are focused on addressing that problem of search and discovery for music on YouTube. The tool, however, doesn't allow people to type in words, similar to the way you might on google.com, to find a song or artist. Try searching on words to a song in "Disco" and get a bunch of song titles that include the keywords.

Search on YouTube is complicated. The company continually looks for way to make music more discoverable. Most people think visually, rather than by keywords. They might type in "funny video" or "dog walking video." The person knows what they want to find, but it remains unclear how to discover it in YouTube search.

Upgrades to YouTube released Thursday include features in Disco, such as the ability to add videos to the queue. The site allows people to search results within the page while watching a video. Results appear on the right side of the video page, without interrupting the video viewing experience.

Searching and discovering music has become one of YouTube's priorities. Engagement follows, along with getting people to stay longer on the site and never leave.

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