YouTube Adds Search Bar to Embedded Videos – More Interactivity and More Views for Videos
by
on December 03, 2008,
Recently YouTube has become a huge newsmaker - only last week we discussed the fact that YouTube introduced a new widescreen player (on the site and forgot to do anything about the embedded player) and today we have another change in the way YouTube videos are displayed, this time when they are located outside of YouTube embedded to blog posts or other pages.
The thing is that from now on all YouTube videos that you embed elsewhere will feature a new search bar right on top of the embedded player:
This new search bar will allow any visitor of a website containing the embedded video to type a search term or phrase and see the results with YouTube videos matching the request - right there in the embedded video player:
And when you click any video in the search results, it will begin playing right there in the very same player. This basically means that a visitor to any website can stay watching numerous videos on a topic he or she is interested in - by simply searching for the videos right there instead of going back to YouTube site.
The majority of the internet users seem to find it too ugly to be true (but I tend to think that any change will be considered to be ugly anyway - until the users get accustomed to the new look) while some are really damaged as the guys from YouBundle: they are very disappointed about the new functionality as it seriously affects the way YouTube videos look on their own site.
I myself don’t see anything particularly ugly in the search functionality and I actually like the way the visitors will now be able to do more with the embedded YouTube videos. I think there is nothing bad in the fact that this new search bar will result in both longer time spent by visitors on websites and blogs and also more views for interesting and relevant videos. I only wonder where exactly the ads will be introduced as since the new player does not encourage people to go to YouTube site itself it will need at least to generate some money.
UPDATE: Every web publisher unhappy with providing visitors with the search funcitonality right within the embedded player can easily configure the player by adding &showsearch=0 to the code so it should not be particularly difficult for anyone hating the feature to offer the player without the search functionality anyway.
