YouTube is the first name that comes to mind when we wish to watch videos on the internet, whether it be the highlights of some cricket match or the trailer for an upcoming movie. While the search tools of YouTube are simple enough, there is room for improvement. Today, the platform has announced feature updates to enhance its search results and make it easier for users to find what they are looking for.
The updates include the introduction of video chapters within search results and access to content in multiple languages.
The introduction of video chapters does not come as a surprise – earlier YouTube had teased its arrival and announced the rolling out of automated chapter segmentation for all uploaded video clips. Video chapters break up a video into sections, each with an individual preview, and add information and context. This will help users avoid tapping into the video and scrolling through the chapters till they find the correct one – they can directly jump to the chapter they are interested in. Each chapter is specifically labeled and named, making it easier for you to find what you seek.
YouTube’s Director of Product Management Pablo Paniagua provided a suitable example in a blog post. “Let’s say you’re looking for a good sourdough recipe and want to work on your kneading technique. With these new search results, you can see all the steps in the video, from feeding the starter to pulling the bread out of the oven — and skip right to the chapter on kneading,” he wrote.
“You’ll be able to make even more informed decisions about what you’re going to watch through video chapters directly on the search page. When available, these time-stamped images detail the different topics covered in videos and let you better evaluate the video you’re about to watch. You can also jump directly to the section most relevant to your specific interest,” the blog post added.
Video previews are also available, allowing you to watch the preview of each video as you scroll and hover over its thumbnail. This feature is already present on desktops, and now it comes to mobiles as well.
The linguistic barrier is one that is hard to break as we often see content on YouTube that we like but are unable to understand completely because of our inability to understand the language. YouTube has a solution – it recommends videos in foreign languages to the user as long as they have captions available in the user’s local language. With automatically translated captions, titles, and descriptions, you can enjoy a greater variety of videos, effectively breaking through the linguistic barrier.
For now, such videos will have English captions, but the company plans to expand this to more languages in the future.
Last but not the least, YouTube is testing a feature in India and Indonesia that lets Google search results get integrated into YouTube with the addition of website links and “other formats.”
“We also recognize that not all searches may have enough high-quality or relevant video content to fully address what you’re looking for. To better surface information you need, we’ve recently started experimenting with a new feature to complement search results with website links and other formats from Google Search,” the company said. This feature might be expanded to other countries in the future as well.
