YouTube is optimizing its search filters to help users find the videos they’re looking for more effectively, without having to wade through irrelevant search results. The most notable change is a new option for the “Shorts” video type, allowing users to filter search results to only show short-form content.
According to a recent post on YouTube’s support forum, search filters now include a special “Shorts” option in the Type menu that limits results to short portrait videos. YouTube has also updated the Sort By menu to improve overall utility.
The Sort By menu has been renamed to Prioritize and now includes the Popularity option instead of View Count. According to YouTube, this new option is intended to help users find popular videos related to their search results by evaluating the number of views on the video and “other relevance signals such as watch time” to determine its popularity for that particular search query.
YouTube has also removed some options from the filter menu to make it more intuitive and improve the overall search experience. These include the “Upload Date – Last Hour” and “Sort by Rating” filters, which the company said “did not work as expected and contributed to user complaints.”
Finding the right video on YouTube just got easier
The Upload Date menu further includes four filters that help users sort results by the most recent uploads, namely “Today,” “This Week,” “This Month,” and “This Year.” YouTube notes that the new popularity filter will now do double duty to help users explore popular, frequently viewed videos, effectively replacing the Sort by Rating option.
These filter changes are already available in the YouTube mobile app and web. Users can access the new filters by clicking the Filters button in the top right of the search results page on the web, or by tapping the three-dot menu button on the search results page on Android or iOS and selecting Search Filters from the pop-up menu.
