Top Picks for Video Search Websites

Top Picks for Video Search Websites
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When we talk about video search websites, the first name that comes to mind is YouTube. YouTube carries anything from homemade stand up comedy to educational videos posted by various educational organisations. Many, however, aren’t aware of other websites that are no less important when it comes to video search. They even carry videos that you may not find over YouTube and other popular video sharing sites.

A video search website, in short, groups videos from such little-known video sharing sites when a search term is entered. Let’s take a look at some top 5 video search websites in terms of performance.

VideoSurf

The attractive thing about VideoSurf is that the search box appears prominently at the top of the website. The tagline below it says that it searches such video sites as Hulu, CNN, TMZ, Metacafe, Fancast and Comedy Central, among others.

While searching for a video on a specific subject, you may be tempted to view its collection of top web videos, viral videos and full movies/ trailers (a movie buff’s dream), among others.

I did a search for video editing and it returned results from Howcast, CNN Video, AOL, YouTube, MEVIO, 5min, and Dailymotion, among others, from a total of 545, 746 videos. I was impressed with the range available. If the number of videos overwhelms you, you can further narrow down your searches to slideshows, full episodes, full movies, podcasts and trailers.

I was impressed. The first 15 videos displayed on the page were all related to video editing.

Blinkx

Blinx Interface

Blinkx’s interface is not as inviting as VideoSurf despite the fact that it tags itself as the worlds’s largest video search engine. It displays only half a web page and you’re invited to search among its 35 million hours of video.

I searched for video editing videos and although it returned a whooping 3,388,000 videos, I was not really impressed. Most of the videos were not about video editing at all. Do Microsoft’s Latest Google Battle, Jason Strathan returns for Transporter 3 and Editing a Wiki have anything to do with video editing?

My verdict is Blinkx is a top video search engine in terms of the number of search results it returns, not in terms of the relevance of search results.

Truveo

truveo Interface

Truveo opens with a simple interface with categories for news, sports, TV shows, music and most twittered categories.

You can limit your search to certain channels as listed on the left column of the website. Among the video sharing sites available for search are CNN, AOL, Hulu and Veoh, among others. This is certainly impressive.

What leaves much to be desired, however, is the relevance of the search results when you enter a search term.

When I searched for video editing , the first video that appears is 7 Habits for Effective Text Editing and there’s Modern Warfare 2 and Dr Jekyll’s Letters Part 1. Only one video on the page was relevant to what I was searching – Giving Personal Videos a Professional Touch.

Even the videos related to your search don’t leave you impressed – Brian Tracy Time Management, Selecting a Pest Control Professional and Bill Gates on Giving.

I would rather be surfing YouTube or Metacafe if this is the kind of search results I would be getting.

SearchVideo

SearchVideo Interface

With SearchVideo you can search for videos by channel (CNN, AOL etc) , by category or by tags. You can also sort by the most recent, most relevant or top favourites, among others.

I searched for video editing and got almost identical results to that in Truveo. Then I searched with the Most Relevant filter and the videos that turned up were mostly related to photo editing.

The Navigation button to the next page is not displayed at the bottom of the page, but at the lower right of the search panel. It took me several seconds to locate this.

Fooooo

Fooooo Interface

Fooooo claims it showcases 300 million videos under such categories as animation, games, science and even sexy.

I searched for video editing and ended up with 145, 379 results. I was impressed with the relevance of the results. About 95 % of the videos were relevant to video editing – Pinnacle video editing, Linux video editing etc. Even the 60th video was about Adobe Premiere CS4.

I would consider using this video search website next to VideoSurf.