Google / YouTube Testing Search In Video

Google announced in India yesterday that they are testing a search feature to allow you to search text within video. This isn’t a huge stretch from key moments but it is neat to see you being able to search the words spoken in a video.

Google said in this announcement, “We’re piloting the ability to search within videos on your phone’s Search app. Just type in your query using the ‘Search in video’ feature & find exactly what you’re looking for.” I should note, as you can see below, Glenn Gabe was able to see this himself in the US, he is far from India.

Here is the tweet announcing this:

Do you struggle with skipping to the good part of the video? 👀
▶ ──🔘── 19:19
We’re piloting the ability to search within videos on your phone’s Search app. Just type in your query using the ‘Search in video’ feature & find exactly what you’re looking for.#GoogleForIndia pic.twitter.com/G3KIhpO7ow

— Google India (@GoogleIndia) December 19, 2022

Play the video of how this works… Google wrote “Besides images, videos are also a rich source of visual information but it’s often hard to find something buried inside a long clip. For example, perhaps you’re watching a long video about Agra, and you’re curious if it also covers Fatehpur Sikri. With a new feature we’re piloting, you’re now able to search for anything that’s mentioned in a video, right from Search. Simply enter a search term using the ‘Search in video’ feature and quickly find what you’re looking for.”

Glenn Gabe shared a bit more on this:

Here is what “Search in video” looks like. You can expand the video from the SERPs and then enter additional text. Google will show you the time and text where that shows up. You can tap that and jump to the part of the video. Very cool, and super helpful. pic.twitter.com/ZuMvCzUkdp

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) December 19, 2022

Searching words spoken in a video is really something pretty amazing. But with the amazing transcriptions YouTube automatically creates, I think it is not surprising to see this feature being tested.

Here is an example of this working in the US with a John Mueller video!

Here is an example of the “Search in video” feature in the SERPs. You will see an “expand” icon in the SERPs & then you can tap “Search in video”. Here I searched for “404” in one of @johnmu‘s older videos. It highlights the text & the time code. And I can jump right there. pic.twitter.com/gqJSK87wV7

— Glenn Gabe (@glenngabe) December 20, 2022

Forum discussion at Twitter.