Most of the time, searching YouTube is easy: y'all but blazon in a term and relevant videos appear. But what happens if y'all need a better YouTube search?

Thankfully, YouTube offers advanced search options that help you drill down and observe what you lot're looking for. Let'due south look at avant-garde search options on YouTube and how to principal them.

Using YouTube's Filter Options

Much of the time, you can use YouTube's born filters to help narrow your search results.

To access them, first run a search on YouTube. Next, click the Filter button and you'll meet several filter options. You tin choose just i of them or combine several for deeper searches.

Annotation that some combinations won't work, however. For example, if you filter by upload date, you can't also filter by channels.

YouTube Filters

Let's quickly run through what these options offer.

Upload Appointment

This pick makes it easy to find the latest content on YouTube. The date options are:

  • Final hour
  • Today
  • This calendar week
  • This month
  • This year

If yous're looking for breaking news, content relevant to a recent software release, or other timely videos, these are a swell help. Use them when the default results show outdated content.

Type

YouTube Channel Search

Want to search YouTube for something other than videos? You tin can change your search to look for Channel, Playlist, Pic, or Show content instead.

If yous weren't aware, full-length movies and shows are bachelor to buy on YouTube, which is what the terminal two choices are for. Shows doesn't prove YouTube Originals, though you tin use it to detect children's shows on YouTube.

Duration

Looking for a quick video, or a longform piece on content to savor over dinner? Use Brusque to discover videos that are nether four minutes. Long will filter to but show videos that are longer than xx minutes.

Features

YouTube 360 Video

This big department lets y'all filter by many different types of content on YouTube. At that place are likewise many to embrace here, but some of the highlights include:

  • Live: See content that's live on YouTube correct now.
  • Subtitles/CC: Only show content that has subtitles. Peachy if you want to sentinel a video but tin can't turn the audio upward.
  • Artistic Commons: Detect content that's licensed for reuse. See our guide to Creative Eatables for an explanation.
  • 360 degrees: Filter by videos that let you click and drag to look all effectually. Endeavor these with a VR headset, if you have one.

Sort By

YouTube View Count Search

By default, YouTube searches are sorted by Relevance, which means that YouTube tries to match your search intent. You can change this to Upload appointment, View count, or Rating if you'd prefer.

Most of these are cocky-explanatory. Upload appointment lets you find brand-new content, while View count makes it easy to detect the most-viewed content on YouTube. Rating, yet, doesn't seem helpful. In our testing, it doesn't bear witness the highest-rated videos offset and instead displays a random mix of videos old and new.

Using Filters As Operators

If you don't want to click on these filter options every time, YouTube offers a faster way to include them in your search. But include a comma after your search term and one of the above keywords to filter by it.

For instance, typing "iPhone, week, short, Hard disk drive" (without the quotes) would show videos about the iPhone uploaded this calendar week that are nether 4 minutes and in Hd. Yous can use but one or equally many as you like, and they work in combination with the avant-garde search operators below.

Master YouTube's Advanced Search Operators

If the in a higher place options don't help y'all find what you're looking for, you tin can use advanced search operators in the search field. These will sound familiar if y'all've used Google'southward advanced operators.

Search for Exact Matches

Past default, YouTube will try to use all the words in your search phrase. Putting your search query in quotes instead will search for that exact string in both video titles and descriptions.

It's useful for anything that requires precision, especially if your search term is ambiguous. Something like "2012 Honda Accord oil modify" (in quotes) should filter out like but unrelated results.

Force Specific Terms

YouTube Plus Operator

If you want to require one or more specific words to appear in your video search, yous tin can utilize the plus operator.

For example, if yous were looking for videos about NES version of Donkey Kong, you lot could enter "Donkey Kong +NES" (not including quotes) and all video results would include NES.

This is a handy style to combine terms for more specific searches, specially because YouTube can sometimes ignore a certain term in a long search query.

YouTube Minus Operator

The flipside of the above is the minus operator. This lets you remove certain terms from your search.

As an example, permit's say you wanted to watch clips of lawn tennis from the Olympics, but didn't desire to include anything from the 2012 games in London. Y'all could enter "Olympic tennis -London" to exclude annihilation that took identify in London.

Search for Multiple Terms

If yous want to observe results that friction match at least i of several different terms, you lot can apply the pipe operator. This returns results for the query on either side of the pipe.

For case, a search for "cats | dogs" would bring up videos containing either one or the other.

Search Video Titles Just

When you lot run a search, YouTube doesn't just await at video titles. It also considers content in the video description, which can requite you lot irrelevant results.

Using the intitle: operator, you can strength YouTube to merely search the titles of videos. Requite information technology a try if the results don't seem to brand sense.

Add together a Wildcard

Not sure what to search for? Let YouTube'due south wildcard operator fill in for you lot. Adding an asterisk will fill up in at least one give-and-take in its place.

It's not useful in all situations, merely it can assist yous find terms related to your search without much extra work. Try something like "best * of 2019" to discover something new.

Specify a Price Range

YouTube Price Search

Looking for product recommendations that fit into a certain budget? Yous tin can use 2 dots to specify a range of cost in video results.

For example, if you search for "build PC $200..$700" you'll find guides on building your own PC with costs between those two values.

Search Past Hashtag

Did you lot know that YouTube lets creators include hashtags on their videos? This can brand it easier to find content grouped around a common theme.

To search by hashtag, but enter 1, like #ThrowbackThursday. Even if the video doesn't take a hashtag in the title, YouTube volition employ ones from the video description. You'll see a few of those hashtags above the video title one time yous click on it.

While YouTube doesn't have a dedicated advanced search folio, information technology's yet possible to perform custom YouTube searches with operators and filters. These should permit you detect whatever you're looking for on YouTube.

If they weren't plenty for y'all, don't forget that yous tin utilize the Google advanced operators mentioned above. Running a site:youtube.com search on Google will help you find relevant content on YouTube.

For more, take a look at other online services that offer advanced search.

15 Windows Command Prompt (CMD) Commands You Must Know

Read Adjacent

About The Writer