WebProNews

In a time when the Internet can place individuals on level ground with multi-national corporations, the way to fix YouTube's search may be by treating some content sources as being more important than others. To YouTube's parent company, Google, weighting some sources over others has been the foundation for its unbeatable duopoly of search and contextual advertising. While PageRank is just one of many factors that determine where websites place for a given search query, the weight gained from lots of quality inbound links does affect it. It's something YouTube needs a dose of from the Doctor Feelgoods in Google's army of engineers. Favoring some content creators over others will be like a bracing tablespoon of castor oil to YouTube's search. Search Insider writer Mark Simon made a Solomonic suggestion in his blog post about the food fight taking place between Hollywood and the video sharing site:

To fight piracy and provide more value to the entertainment industry, YouTube should alter its site search ranking to favor its partners — the roughly 25 big media players like Sony Pictures, Capitol Records, and NBC, each of whom have their own channels within YouTube. I say this because, increasingly, YouTube’s site search is the video-search tool of choice for the video downloading set. And as is the case with any search tool, higher-ranking YouTube results are more likely to get viewed, while lower-ranking ones get ignored. By placing Partners on top of YouTube search rankings, YouTube would effectively hand viewership over to its partners, while forcing pirates — who compete for that same viewership — down into obscurity.

Simon cited several examples of Big Media content, all of which have a partner channel on YouTube, yet receive minimal benefit from searches for videos. Shows like "The Office," "Lost," and the Boston-frightening "Adult Swim" don't fare well in search, though they do attract plenty of viewers anyway. Although the stakes at the YouTube/Big Media table are much higher than those of our friends in the small- and medium-sized businesses who visit us each day, the lesson comes across clearly. Making one's content more accessible to search can only help its exposure. --- Tag: Add to Del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit | Furl Bookmark WebProNews: