YouTube Video Search, Results Now Ranked By Time Watched

The way video algorithm search works is by selecting individual videos to be displayed, however a new system to rank video results is changing, it then follows that YouTube will now display results by ranking videos based time watched metrics. The objective by YouTube is to present videos to users (or viewers) that are trending and engaging by the length of their individual viewing times.

This new changes comes in a context where ongoing efforts to streamline video search based on features such as watch time, furthermore it follows the changes made to Suggested Videos, and recent improvements to YouTube Analytics. Yesterday, it was also introduced a new Time Watched reporting to YouTube Analytics.

Google Knowledge Graph to Show on Auto-Complete Search

It was announced by Google two new updates, which will start today displaying publicly on the Google search auto-complete fields, for anyone to see provided their search is done or typed using the English language.  These new updates are based on its Knowledge Graph innovation system, where it was first introduced back in May.

The way the Knowledge Graph works by displaying a small summary of factual interesting relevant search topics. It will now include further improvements such as localized topic summaries which are auto customised depending on which part of the world a user is based and searching from.

As an example: when a user types or starts to type on the search bar the word “rio”, then the user will see relevant auto fill options such as WRio the film, Rio the casino, or Rio de Janiero the city".  The other innovation from Google is a carousel interface that will start appearing  today.  This new tweak will allows for a better interactive interface where a slideshow type display can show topics that relate to the user typed search term.

In this post it can be read further details and insights at The Official Google Blog.

Twitter Planning Platform Structural Improvements

Following a recent article, it is apparent that twitter is planning many changes at its core platform. As a result this means, that the web technology is always evolving and competing for better ease of display for its users and more notably to advertisers and marketing companies. Twitter has already implemented media rich tweets, however not to the extend it is now planning.

The aim seems to be to please advertisers and thus increase profitability, the main development is being directed to producing rich media kind of expandable widgets that are called cards, an example can be seen here.  Twitter is now preparing and engaging with developers so that apps can be built using this new functionality and as a result embed cards to be displayed.

There are existing twitter applications where these "cards" may never be displayed, examples are Tweetbot and Flipboard. It can then be concluded that these apps may have to stop operating. It then follows that for this apparent reason, the Flipboard CEO Mike McCue has recently resigned from the Twitter board.  There are many interesting developments currently happening at twitter so we do recommend to read the full story here.