You might already be familiar with Google Advanced Image Search and how effectively it works as an image search tool. Have you ever wondered, though, if this powerful tool from Google can also work as a video search tool? Many users of the search engine have, and for good reasons. After all, Google Advanced Image Search has made image search better, providing results that are compatible with user intent. Thus, it is not out of place to expect a similar search efficiency for videos. The question, however, remains. Can you use Google Advanced Image Search for videos?
In this article, we provide the answer to that question and consider the relatively lesser-known feature of Google Advanced Search for videos – how it works and how to get the best of this feature.
Can you use Google Advanced Image Search for Videos?
While you can filter your search on Google Advanced Image Search to produce results in your preferred file format, the closest to videos you can get are images in animated, .gif format. Google Advanced Image Search does not return video results. So the straightforward answer to the question ‘can you use Google Advanced Image Search for videos’ is no.
However, Google has an Advanced Search tool for Videos that you can use to carry out optimized video searches. This tool is called the Google Advanced Video Search.
How to use Google Advanced Search for Videos
Like Google Images, the Videos tab of Google’s search results can help you find videos related to your search query. This, however, is not always sufficient. Sometimes, your query might be really specific and you would need to perform an advanced search. But how?
Where to find Google Advanced Video Search
Getting to Google Advanced Video Search is as easy as visiting google.com/advanced_video_search or searching for “Google advanced video search” on Google and clicking on the first search result.
How to Use the Advanced Video Search
Once you get to the video search tool, all you need to do to find the video(s) you seek is to set the relevant filters. You start by filling the “Find videos of” form with the following information –
- All these words: Here, you should include all the keywords or a list of important words that you want your search to be about.
- This exact phrase or word: The video results will contain this specific phrase or word, so you can input a sub-keyword that streamlines your search here.
- Any of these words: Input here, any other words that you would want to see in the video or which describe the video you are searching for.
- None of these words: Words that you input here will not be included in the search results.
Note: Unlike the Google search box, you do not need to use search operators (minus signs or quotes, for example) when entering the words into these fields.
Video Search
To further streamline your search results, fill the boxes under “Then narrow your search results by…”
- Language: This lets you filter results from pages in whichever language you select. From Afrikaans to Vietnamese, you have over 40 language options to choose from. You can also set it to “any language”.
- Duration: You can specify the average duration of the video, choosing from short (4 minutes or less), medium (anywhere from 4 to 20 minutes) or long (20 minutes or longer)
- Date: Here is where you let the search engine know if you are looking for videos on pages updated within the past year, month, week, 24 hours, or even the past hour.
- Quality: High-quality videos only? You can either choose that or leave your search unrestricted to any quality.
- Site or domain: You can limit your search to one site only (youtube.com, for example) or a domain such as .edu or .org, etc.
- Subtitles: This gives you the option of having results with any type of subtitles or closed captions only.
- Safe search: Your results will either contain explicit content or not, depending on which option you choose here.
Let’s take an example. Say, we’re searching for ‘blog post SEO tutorial videos for beginners, uploaded within the last year,’ this is what the Advanced Video Search inputs would look like.
We’re leaving the language, duration, and quality filters unrestricted but since we only need recent tutorials, we would set the date to “past year”.
We do not need explicit content in the results, so we set the SafeSearch filter to hide all content that is sexually explicit.
All that done, we can now click the blue “Advanced Search” button.
Not satisfied with the results? You can tweak the search with the tabs at the top. For example, we tweaked the date on the drop-down menu from ‘past year’ to ‘any time’ to increase the scope of the results.
How to do an advanced video search in the Google search box
Without visiting the Google Advanced Video Search page, you can perform an advanced video search on the Google homepage search box by doing the following:
- Type the keywords or important words of your search query, e.g SEO for beginners
- Put any exact words you want to see in the video in quotes, e.g “guest blog”
- Type “OR” in between all the words you would want the video to have, e.g guide OR tutorial OR easy
- To remove results with words you do not want, add a minus sign before the words, e.g – paid
Conclusion
Google is undoubtedly a powerful search engine. With its advanced search tools, however, it is twice as powerful. There is an advanced tool for web pages and files, books, images, and videos – pretty much everything you need. By utilizing the Advanced Search for Videos, as this article has discussed, you can perform complex searches and find very specific results – like a video of a cat uploaded to a Spanish website within the last week. And if video searches are something you often do, then you can simply add the Google Advanced Video Search to your homepage for an even quicker total search time.
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