It’s Official: “Funny Videos” = “YouTube”

Remember all the hubbub about using Google’s name to describe searches on other engines?  New data suggests that “YouTube” has become synonymous with “funny videos,” and I don’t expect Mountain View to make as much of a fuss over this custom.

Heather Hopkins, a vice president of research at Hitwise UK, discovered the trend.  “UK Internet searches for funny videos started to pick up just before YouTube [developed] much brand recognition in February and March 2006," she wrote.  "Once YouTube started to take off, we saw a precipitous decline in UK internet searches for ‘funny videos’ as illustrated in the chart below.”

Go look at the graph on the Hitwise blog, or take my word for it – searches for “funny videos” are approaching zero even as “youtube” queries continue to climb.

Again, Google can’t be sorry to see this happening, but the data may indicate one thing about YouTube: it’s still largely a sort of online AFV.  Despite all the political content that’s been uploaded in recent months, despite a recent Google CPG Blog post about “how to” videos, YouTube’s where a lot of people go to see guys get hit in the crotch.

Oh, well.  As a Monty Python fan, I can’t really claim the comic high ground.  Long live the fish slapping dance!