There are so, so many things, back-end and front-end, that YouTube mobile app “experiments” with these days. And users never know if it’s “just them” – i.e., just their operating system, geographical region, or even their device that’s targeted with these “experiments” – so it’s always good to compare notes, so to speak.
On that note – it’s of interest to pay attention to this post that says at least for some users – reporting on Reddit – YouTube is now mixing up results for search quires that they type into their YouTube app to get results specific to this platform – with the video giant’s mothership, Google.
YouTube seem to be experimenting with doing everything except for what users actually ask for.
The blurring of the line between the two apps here is striking: a specific search reproduced by the site showed links to four YouTube videos, and then populated the rest with Google’s “from the web” search results.
The posts seems to assume there is still actually such a thing as “organic results on Google search” – okay – and if we accept that, from there on, it describes the first Google result inserted into YouTube app’s search as “an exact replica of the item on Google search” that includes “the page title, site name, publication date, and the meta description.”
As ever, the caveat here is that not all YouTube mobile app users might be seeing it yet (or even noticing it, in what’s now becoming an overwhelming user interface noise, comprised of ads, irrelevant/repetitive suggestions (ads), auto-playing videos, and the like.)
In other words, not all users might right now have Google results grafted onto their YouTube searches, or realize it. And that could mean both that they still are yet in for this “treat” – or that it’s an experiment on human users of the internet that will not last or produce permanent damage.
“Another possibility is that it is being rolled out gradually to monitor user reactions,” GHacks writes. I’m all for this possibility – but only for the sake of somebody elaborating on exactly how Google would go about this “monitoring of reactions” thing.
Judging by the report though – none of us seem too keen on fixing things to make them even more broken than they already are. (And both YouTube and Google search already are pretty much broken.)
So, unsurprisingly, Reddit’s reaction to this (apparent) latest change in the way search is done in YouTube’s mobile app has been mostly negative.
