I read Is YouTube the Next Google? in Read/WriteWeb tonight (the title is somewhat misleading as YouTube is owned by Google so it’s not really the next Google, it is Google - but YouTube’s search is much different than Google’s textual search) and the post reminded me that, at times, I searched YouTube and was surprised how many of my typical search queries had user generated videos that existed and were tagged for that phrase or a related phase.
Earlier this year I had a client that ran an OCD clinic in London and wanted to create videos for Google Video Ads, and found several OCD videos in YouTube. It worked for travel too - even in some details of places - perhaps even unfamilar hotels in a foriegn city that I might book a room in (if such were available); but it never went beyound that.
However, it appears that younger searches are using video search via services like YouTube almost as a replacement for Textual Search that Google normally provides.
True, Google has put Universal Search in place that includes videos and images into the mix, but at the end of the day what might emerge is textual search will eventually be replaced by visual and voice search (the new Google iPhone Voice Search was just released today in the iTunes store - though I can’t seem to find it yet and download it).
According to Read/WriteWeb
“….. he mentioned that his son accesses the web through YouTube. At first, I didn’t get it and thought Ian was making a joke. But then I realized he was not. Whenever his son needed any information, he would open up YouTube, type in the search term and then just watch the videos that showed up as matches. He never Googled anything; he never went to any other site; his entire web experience was confined to YouTube videos. It was rather puzzling.”
Since I have access to Comscore Media Metrix, I figured, if it’s really true that younger people are replacing textual search with video search, then the demographics profile of YouTube.com of October 07 compared to October 08 ought to show some marked differences - and they did!
October 2007 YouTube.com Demographics
Then I did the same thing for YouTube Demographics October 2008
Usage of YouTube by pre-adolescents 9-14 jumped by roughly 500% over that last year - kids between 2 and 11 years jumped up even more!
Now, you have to wonder - are kids of 2 years old using YouTube? I don’t know, but, somehow, ComScore thinks they are. Hey, maybe we should call them “eKids” or “eToddlers”, and they probably aren’t as likely to use textual search as video search, or image search.
Also, notice the % Reach has gone up quite a bit, as well. For example, % Reach is calculated as the the # of Unique Vistors (000) / Total Internet Audience for a Category - Comscore takes care of the Categorization and maintaining all of that is part of the hefty pricetag.
But ……. if YouTube is getting more youngsters searching on it - shouldn’t Google Textual Search get less, or at least, grow less fast, relative to Youtube?
Google Search Demographics - Comscore - October 2007
Again, I ran the same report for October 2008 and ….
And sure enough, there’s not nearly as much growth - for kids 9-14 there were 8,019,000 Uniques in October 2007 and 11,707,000 in 2008, an increase of 45% vs. the 497% growth of the use of YouTube for the same age group.
Now, I didn’t look if there was differences in usage based on gender, but I’ve seen enough to be convinced that younger people, the future - is in video search and not so much textual search.
If that’s true, it has profound implications, as Search continues to evolve.
Further on in the Read/Write Web post Is YouTube the Next Google?
” … Ian said that his son frequently searches for episodes of Bakugan, which come up perfectly. Another likely search for a 9-year-old, Lance Wataru (a Pokemon character), works well, too. More specific searches, such as Donkey from Shrek, work even better.”
All I can say is ha, ha, ha … so as more content is generated and placed online, search results for Video will get richer and richer and that can only mean textual searches days are numbered (but we don’t know the number yet).
In the RWW post it’s mentioned the main reason for textual search is hyperlinks work better - but that’s gradually being replaced by hyperlinking images
“…The main reason that text rules the web today is because of hyperlinks. Linking pages via text links is what makes the web possible. Hyperlinking videos would be a harder thing to do. Not impossible, of course, because you can link objects and insert text in videos, but it’s just not as elegant as text. Besides the linking issue, not everything would be an effective video. For example, a research paper could be made into a video but would not be as easy to follow as the text.
I agree, not everything is meant to be turned into video or audio content - and honestly, I bet if we took brain scans of searches using textual vs. voice search (ie: Google’s new iPhone Search applicaton with Audio Search) we’d find different centers of the brain being used in a textual search vs. an audio search - and we might as well extend that to video and image search as well.
And if we do that - we’ll see the queries themselves will differ in subtle ways, between what we’d write and what we’d say, when entering the same query to a Search Engine.
Is it far fetched to say the newer generation is evolving past textual search …. ? I don’t think it’s that much of a strech.
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