You know that 1994 video that turned up recently of Vice President Cheney saying that invading Iraq would turn into a quagmire? Jon Garfunkel at PBS MediaShift wanted to know how it got onto YouTube. (It turns out it was posted by a New York City artist.) In his hunt, Jon looked into the larger question: why is video search so damn lousy? Here’s one answer:
Of the relevant top 60 search results for “Cheney 1994” on Google video search, all but one of the clips are hosted on YouTube/Google (the other was from Crooks & Liars). None of the derivative clips that aired on network TV were sourced to its respective website; they were only linked to YouTube.
Video is, of course, tough to index. Text is simple. But much of the problem can be blamed on video providers who don’t properly take advantage of software that could pump out tons of metadata, making video search much easier.