Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Searching within a YouTube channel

I had to solve this challenge today: I wanted to send a link to a YouTube video within it's channel. This avoids all the sometimes scary video links that show while you are in the general YouTube site. This particular channel had hundreds of videos. The general YouTube search window would not open the video within the channel. How to find the link I wanted?

What is a YouTube Channel?

A YouTube channel is simply an account set up by an individual or an organization to host videos. You can subscribe to channels and they will show up when you sign in to YouTube.

How do I search within a channel?

At first glance there doesn't appear to be a way to do that. Here is a hidden trick:

Open the channel's homepage. Click on "Uploads" at the top of the window and a search option will appear at the right - just above the sidebar of videos.

To share a link, click on "Share" and the video's URL will appear.

Here's something strange - you can't get the code to embed a video while you are within a channel. You have to view the video outside the channel in the general YouTube site. Use the share link as the web address or the general search window to get there. In the general YouTube site an "Embed" button is available below the window. Click on it to get the embed code.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

this trick dosent appear to work anymore unfortuanently, the searh box searches all of youtube -unless i am doing something wrong, if a new solution could be found, that would be good

Diane Robison said...

YouTube still has a way to search within a channel.

The key is to be on the channel page, not your home page hosting the channel content. From within your home page The words 'view channel' are generally under the channel title. If you see a list of your other channels on the left, you are in your home page and not in the actual channel page.

Once on the channel page there are couple of possibilities for the search window, depending on page style - just look for the magnifying glass icon within the page.