Yahoo has launched a test site for searching video
content on the web.
The site, at
http://video.search.yahoo.com/,
went up on Wednesday and pits Yahoo against competitors such as
Singingfish, which is owned by America Online.
The search service allows users to narrow their query results by
file format, size or by duration. Users can also filter results
based on internet domains, by specific website or can exclude
unsuitable content.
An entry about the video search service was posted on the
official blog of the Yahoo search team
(http://ysearchblog.com) on
Wednesday in the name of Jeremy Zawodny, a Yahoo search
executive.
"The costs of producing video content have been steadily
decreasing in recent years. Between the adoption of broadband
internet connections and easier to use video editing software, it
is no surprise we are seeing a lot more video content make its way
on to the internet. And what is out there today is just the tip of
the iceberg," said the entry.
Zawodny talks about the existing challenges search engine
providers face to find video content, which in many cases are
"hidden behind complex Javascript, Flash-based players, and other
non-crawler friendly obstacles".
To address these difficulties, Yahoo will enable its search
crawler to support indexing of video enclosures in RSS feeds,
according to Zawodny. "At the most basic level, this is just a
matter of pointing to a video instead of an MP3 file," he wrote.
"The beauty of this is that there is existing infrastructure for
handling simple enclosures. Many RSS readers already consume
enclosures."
Yahoo also wants to promote the use of metadata in video
content, which would make the content easier to find and index,
Zawodny wrote.
"We are suggesting an optional set of metadata extensions we
have been calling 'Media RSS'. They are aimed at publishers who
would like to provide a rich set of metadata about the media being
published. Our video search system will also support these Media
RSS extensions in addition to video enclosures," he wrote.
Juan Carlos Perez writes for the IDG News Service