Google Now Shows Popular Music Videos In Search Results

Google has recently changed the way web or music videos are displayed on search result pages. If you love watching music videos on video sharing sites like YouTube, Vimeo or MySpace, you can know use Google Search to find music videos for your favorite band or album.

Here is how the improved video search results appear on Google search result pages:

There are quite a few important things to note in the videos search results that appear along with regular Google search results (for specific albums, artists – see example )

Related Links: Apart from the video thumbnails and it’s corresponding YouTube link, Google also returns related links of the same video that are hosted or embedded on other video sharing websites e.g Metacafe, Dailymotion, vbox and Myspace. So if you have an online presence on any of these video sharing websites, you can grab the link directly from Google search results and bookmark or share it – there is no need to search for the same video on other sites recursively.

Album name, date and other information: Along with the length of the video, Google also shows important information like when the album was released (year), the title of the album and so on. This is useful because you can know whether the link points to a video of an older album or that of a recent one. (also read: upload videos to your Google Docs account)

Google says in a blog post that their algorithm scan the entire web for video content and algorithmically ranks the best sources for each song. Instead of returning repetitive links in search results, Google groups similar videos together and offer a more streamlined search interface – so that you are quickly able to find the specific video of a particular artist.

Does Google’s video search make it any better than YouTube ? Yes as well as No.

Google’s video search is nice when you want to quickly find the most popular music videos of an artist on other sources or websites, except YouTube. So if you are doing some research and quickly want to find the best three videos about a keyword, Google search is a better option.

But if you are like me and always want that extra scoop, when it comes to videos – always opt for YouTube’s advanced video search. Better results and more importantly, you can filter videos in different categories e.g HD videos, duration (filter longer videos), filter search results by upload date, view and so on.

Clicking the “Videos” link in the sidebar of Google search result page also works well, but then again you lose the common web search results and the entire page is filled with videos hosted on Google videos and YouTube.

What do you think about the way video search results are displayed on Google? Share your ideas in the comments below.