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« Return to: Search Engine Shoot-Out

TV Guides of the Internet
The search services that specialize in finding Web videos weren't able to keep pace with Google's video index.
Service First round Second round Third round Average Comments
Google Video 21 21 18 20 The most reliable video-search engine we tested. Its results page provides clip thumbnails and the source URL without looking cluttered.
AOL Video Search 19 18 18 18 Surprise! AOL's Truveo media-search engine is comprehensive and timely. The results provide fast access to top video categories too.
TubeSurf 19 22 13 18 Metasearch tool scans multiple video-search engines. Very accurate, but lacks thumbnail images and a preview window.
YouTube (Google) 18 18 15 17 If a video's online, you'll probably find it in this inexhaustible video catalog. YouTube's Google-like results page is easy to browse, too.
Blinkx 16 17 18 17 Solid search tool with a few annoying interface quirks. Example: The search-results page doesn't show the length of video clips.
Yahoo Video 15 13 14 14 Well-designed interface and a respectable clip-finder, although we expected better results from the search giant.
Pixsy 14 - - - -
Search for Video 14 - - - -
PureVideo 13 - - - -
ClipRoller 13 - - - -
AltaVista Video Search (Yahoo) 7 - - - -
Brightcove 3 - - - -
Chart note: The average score is composed of scores from three rounds of testing. Our scoring awarded a search engine three points if the first link in the results led to the target answer or site (or if the answer itself appeared at the top of the results page or within the first result). A link to the correct answer as the second or third result was worth two points, and a link to the correct response elsewhere in the top ten results scored one point. If the target answer or item didn't appear anywhere on the first page, we awarded no points to the search engine.