Irony of Search I

There’s something unexpected with content search on YouTube.

This is something that happens when searching for something specific. For example, a search relating to the repair or maintenance of a specific item around the house.

I observe this pattern as follows. The first 3 or 4 results are OK. They show some relevance but are not very promising. Following these are a few results of “People also watched” which are hardly related at all. Perhaps the algorithm wishes to redirect my attention towards a path it can better monetize. Then a few more results that continue to degrade in quality and relevance. Then a series of “For You” results, which is the content I’d see on the homepage. I’ll scroll past these, see a few more mediocre hits and often give up.

Now here comes the weird part. Two or three days later, I’ll return to the YouTube homepage and a selection of good results relating to that previous query are now on my homepage. This has occurred many times and continues to surprise me. These results are the ones I wished to find, but were not available initially. They are often older videos, with very low view counts and lower production quality.

It is as if I had been looking for a needle in a haystack, gave up, and someone had found it for me while I was sleeping and placed it where I’d find it when I woke up.

Since Google initially bought YouTube and they now share a parent company, we should ask: is this a feature or a bug? What limitations or incentives are at play here?