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Comment by jarvist

16 days ago

I've always had watch history off, but my searches now return a couple of pages of short form nonsense, before my actual results.

YouTube search is just broken. Has been for a long long long time. You get 3-4 relevant results and then it just shows you random unrelated crap.

  • It's not broken from Google's perspective. The results are just optimized for their ad revenue rather than your viewing preference. Even the engagement hooks don't care what your viewing preferences are - just what they've calculated to optimize watch potential * ad revenue.

    • You've got to permanently block 1000s of "popular" channels. Then youtube starts working like it did in 2006 again.

  • It is better to use google to search youtube via site:youtube.com operator.

    • Better to use Gemini to search YT, you can just talk to it what you want, and see the videos right there in the chat window. I used this to find well targeted music, it can also review artists and discuss about them not just play music.

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