YouTube Updates Search Feature, Adds Shorts Filter and Popularity Options

JAKARTA - YouTube announced an update to its search tab, featuring new filters and sorting systems that it claims are more intuitive and relevant to user needs.

In its update, YouTube added a special filter to the "Type" menu, which allows users to choose whether to display short Shorts videos or long-form videos (VOD) in search results.

"Our goal is to equip you with more effective advanced search tools, ensuring you can consistently and efficiently find the content you love," the company wrote in an official announcement on Google's help page, quoted Monday, January 26.

In addition, YouTube changed the name of the "Sort By" menu to "Prioritize". This update is designed so that content ordering can focus more on the usefulness and relevance of search results.

The "View count" option will also be changed to "Popularity". Thus, the YouTube system will not assess the popularity of a video only from the number of views, but also from the watch time, so that search results are more in line with user queries.

Furthermore, YouTube also simplifies the filter menu by removing two filters, namely "Upload Date - Last Hour" and "Sort by Rating", which are considered less effective and often cause complaints.

However, YouTube insists that users can still find the latest videos through the Upload Date filter, as well as browse the most watched videos through the new Popularity filter.

"You can still find the latest search results in one of our Upload Date filters, and explore popular videos that have been watched a lot using the new Popularity filter option," he said.