12+ Best Video Search Engines of 2022

Videos are the most challenging type of media to search for because you can’t search the video content.

If you have ever had any luck finding a video, it’s because someone has manually attached searchable keywords to it.

This information is referred to as metadata, which includes things like captions, motions, faces, and objects.

However, a good search engine can help.

Here, we will cover the 12 best video search engines of 2022 and why they’re the best.  

What Is a Video Search Engine?

A search engine is software that searches the internet for things that match the keywords you enter into the search bar.

A good one should show you everything relevant to your query.

A functional search engine uses phrase matching and keyword highlighting to find relevant websites and articles for what you are searching for.

A video search engine is a search engine looking for the specific format of a video.

The concept is straightforward, but the application is not.

Search engines can only see the title and the metadata of the videos, not the content.

Unlike documents, videos contain a lot of information in them.

To have a perfect system, the search engine would need to understand:

• Words spoken
• Who or what is in the video
• Emotions
• Background- colors, objects, noises

As of now, video search engines can’t search for these key items, only the metadata terms.

Is There a Reverse Video Search Engine?

No, there’s not, but most search engines can perform a reverse video search.

For the same reasons, it is challenging to search for videos, and it’s challenging to reverse search for them.

So let’s check it out.

How It Works

When you do a reverse search, you’re using the search engine to find web pages where your item appears.

People do this when that’s all the information they have.

An example is if you take a picture of a bug you’ve never seen before and want to find out what kind it is.

You can use the photo to reverse search for the bug.

To reverse search a video, take a screenshot from it.

The search engine will take the image and try to match the colors and pixels, which works alright, but it’s not always accurate.

Where It Works

Reverse searching for an image works on Google, Bing, and most major search engines.

Some third-party tools you can use are Berify, Shutterstock, and TinEye.

The latter three specialize in reverse searching for images, so they’ll give more thorough results.

How to Use It

You’ll have to go to any of the sites listed and run a query using a screenshot from your video.

Here’s how to take a screenshot from your computer, an iPhone, or an Android.

The Best Video Search Engines Of 2022

Now that we understand what a video search engine is and how to use it, we can decide the best ones.

There will be an overview of each search engine, how it works, and an explanation for why it’s a good one.

1. Google

Google has the largest search engine market share and one of the largest video databases on the internet.

It is unquestionably the most popular search engine in the world.

Because of its popularity, it has a lot of influence over other search engines and how they operate.

How Google Works

Searching for videos on google is easy.

Open your web browser and go to google.com.

Type what you want to search for into the query bar.

Click the search button.

Underneath the query bar, it says all, images, maps, shopping, and videos.

Click on the option that says video, and then the results showing will be in video format.

You can narrow your search, or make it more specific, by selecting tools at the top right.

It will allow you to filter the results by video duration, upload date, video quality, or source website.

Why Is This a Good Search Engine?

Google has one of the largest video databases.

It’s excellent at providing accurate, high-quality results in seconds.

It’s not always obvious what people are searching for.

So it has put a lot of effort into understanding what the user intends to search for, which is especially helpful in video searches.

2. YouTube

YouTube is the second most visited site in the world.

It’s the largest video-sharing website and has one of the best video search algorithms.

There are over 500 hours of content uploaded to YouTube at any given minute and just as many hours of content being consumed by over 2 billion monthly users.

How YouTube Works

YouTube is fantastic for searching for videos.

You can easily search for specific videos, explore content based on your watch history, or browse through trending videos.

Go to the website and type what you’re looking for into the search bar.

Since you’re already on a video-sharing website, all results will be videos.

YouTube has a filtering system at the top underneath the query bar.

You can filter by upload date, video type, duration, or features.

You can sort the results according to relevance, upload date, view count, or rating.

You don’t have to pick just one option to filter by either.

You can combine them all to get specific results.

Why Is This a Good Video Search Engine?

YouTube has the best search algorithm.

It considers three things: relevance, engagement, and quality.

YouTube SEO will personalize the result for each user.

It’ll look at which videos you’ve watched in the past and what you’ve searched for.

As a result, different users can get different search results for the same query.

3. Bing

As far as market share goes, Bing is Google’s biggest competitor even though it only has a fraction of the traffic.

It’s often dismissed as an inferior search engine, but it has a powerful one and offers more filter options than Google.

How Bing Works

Type what you want to search for into the query bar.

Hit enter.

Underneath the search bar, select videos to get to Bing video.

You can do an even more advanced search with the two filter buttons in the top right corner.

One is filtering for appropriateness, and you can choose between strict, moderate, and unfiltered.

The other filter lets you change the results based on duration, date, resolution, source, and price.

The price option isn’t common on search engines.

Why Is This a Good Video Search Engine?

Bing videos are optimized for mobile usage and are played directly from the website.

It’s also easy to find paid video content with the filter.

4. Dailymotion

Dailymotion is a video-sharing platform.

It’s not as popular worldwide, but this French-based website has over 300 million users and 150 million views per month.

It’s easy for users to upload videos.

It can support video files up to 2GB in size or 60 minutes in length. There’s also an optional monetization of videos.

How Dailymotion Works

Dailymotion works like the other video search engines mentioned, but it does have fewer filtering options.

You can search for a specific video or browse the trending videos on the homepage by topic.

There’s entertainment, sports, music, and news.

If you want to search, type your keyword into the query box and select search.

Once the results have appeared, you have the option to filter them.

You can filter by upload date and duration, and you can sort by most recent or most viewed videos.

Why Is This a Good Video Search Engine?

Dailymotion has an intuitive and straightforward layout and is the widest-reaching alternative to YouTube.

5. Yahoo

Yahoo has a search engine market share that’s less than 2%.

Surprisingly, that still puts it in 3rd place after Google and Bing.

Yahoo is often overlooked as an option for video search engines, but it has one similar to Google, just with fewer filtering options.

How Yahoo Works

For a Yahoo video search, type your search term into the search bar.

Then, select the video button underneath the search query.

You can filter these results based on length, date, resolution, or source.

Why Is This a Good Video Search Engine?

Yahoo is good to use if you want to find various results.

It has an algorithm similar to Google’s but is still different in some ways.

If you search for the same keyword on Google, Bing, and Yahoo, you will get very different results on Yahoo than on the other two.

6. DuckDuckGo

DuckDuckGo is the best search engine to use if you want to maintain your privacy.

It blocks trackers, gives you secure connections, and lets you search privately.

It has a small percentage of the market share but still offers a high-quality product.

How DuckDuckGo Works

Once you’re on the website, you can type a keyword into the query bar and select search.

Then, when the results come up, you can click on the tab that says videos.

You can then narrow the search results even more by using the filter.

There’s a safe search filter that you can turn on or off.

There are also filters for duration, resolution, time, and region.

The regional filter is unique to DuckDuckGo. It’s another way to get more varied results.

Why Is This a Good Video Search Engine?

DuckDuckGo has a reliable algorithm and intuitive user interface.

It has a unique feature that allows you to search for results based on region, and you can protect your privacy no matter what.

7. Ask

Ask used to be a popular search engine site, but now it’s just a question and answer site.

You can search for videos on it all the same.

How Ask Works

Type your keyword into the search bar and hit enter.

Click on the videos tab.

You’ll get video results from YouTube, but they will be different from the results you’d get directly on the website.

Why Is This a Good Video Search Engine?

Ask can give you more varied search results than if you searched on YouTube or Google.

8. Facebook

Facebook is a social media site that has developed a search engine that’s more powerful than you might think.

It uses an algorithm called Edgerank to decide when and if a post will appear for a user.

It’s primarily used for people and pages, but you can effortlessly search videos.

How Facebook Works

Search for videos by typing your keyword into the query bar and then clicking the video tab.

Unfortunately, Facebook’s search engine can only search through content on Facebook.

So you’ll see results from your friends’ pages first and then what’s available to the public after.

You can filter the results based on location, date, and source.

The more natural language you use to search, the better the results will be, too.

Why Is This a Good Video Search Engine?

Facebook has a powerful search engine that can give you highly personalized content.

It can only search through content available on Facebook, but there is a lot there.

9. Dogpile

Dogpile isn’t very well known.

It’s a small website that’s a possible alternative to more major ones.

It doesn’t have any filtering features and has a limited database.

How Dogpile Works

Type your keyword into the query bar and press GoFetch!.

Then select the videos tab.

Why Is This a Good Video Search Engine?

It’s nice to have options just in case, but this search engine is pretty mediocre.

10. Metacafe

Metacafe is a video-sharing platform that offers users strange but fun videos.

It’s good at what it does, which is filling a specific video niche.

How Metacafe Works

Search for a specific video by keyword in the query bar or browse through videos by category.

You can sort results by latest, popular, or trending.

Why Is This a Good Video Search Engine?

Metacafe is good if you want weird, creative videos.

It has a rich assortment of short-form videos to help inspire you.

11. Veoh

Veoh is an American video-sharing website that was pretty popular in the mid-2000s.

It couldn’t compete with the other websites and fell out of popularity.

You can still use it today.

How Veoh Works

You can browse Veoh by category or search for specific videos.

There’s a mix of user-generated and indie video categories.

If you search for a video, you can sort them by popularity, recent, length, or put it in alphabetical order.

Why Is This a Good Video Search Engine?

Veoh lets you search in many different languages.

It’ll also bring up results from the subtitles, which lets your keyword go further.

No other search engine has that capability yet.

12. Yandex

Yandex is the most popular search engine in Russian-speaking countries like Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and Kazakhstan.

It has a similar layout to Google.

How Yandex Works

Type the keyword into the search bar and hit enter.

Click on the videos tab.

You can filter results by video duration, video quality, or how recent it is.

Why Is This a Good Video Search Engine?

Yandex is very useful if you speak Russian.

You can search in English, but the results are limited.

How to Use a Video Search Engine

Using a video search engine is not much different from other search engines.

They were all designed to be user-friendly and follow the same basic principle.

1. Search for Videos

Most search engines operate similarly.

There will be a query bar somewhere near the top of the page that you can type keywords into.

Some of these sites only have video content, but some require you to filter the results to get to videos.

If you don’t see what you’re looking for right away, you can narrow down your results by using a filter.

Most filters allow you to choose to search based on the time, date, and duration of the video.

2. Use SEO to Rank Your Videos

SEO stands for search engine optimization.

That means making your content easier to find when someone does a web search.

Since Google is the most popular, most sites follow its rules for optimization.

3. Instructions to Search for Video

You can make your video rank higher by keeping SEO in mind.

Use keywords that people are searching for in the title and the description of your video.

The more accurate keywords you add, the more likely your video will be discovered.

How to Get Your Video To Come Up on Search Engine

There are slight differences between the requirements for each of these video search engines, but we have some general tips that should help for all of them.

• Pay attention to your title and description; use keywords
• Add a transcript
• Choose the best platform for your content
• If you’re using your own website, make sure the whole page is SEO ready

If you’re not sure what keywords people may use when searching for a video, do keyword research yourself.

You can see what relevant keywords come up.

Using as many descriptive keywords as you can in the description will improve the chances of your video’s retrieval in a cc search.

Wrapping Up

As we’ve seen, it’s challenging to search for a video online.

Most videos only have a title and short description in their metadata.

That makes it difficult for a search engine to give you the results you’re looking for.

Despite these obstacles, there are some good video search engines out there.

And they’re getting better all the time.

These have been the 12 best video search engines of 2022.

We’ll have to wait and see who’s the best in 2023.