YouTube is the second largest search engine on the web, behind Google. This statistic doesn’t sit well with me – I don’t know about you, but I would have never considered YouTube a search engine. I don’t go there when I want to research a topic or learn about new things. YouTube is NOT a search engine, but it is a resource, nonetheless. It is self-contained – it only has so much “information” to offer its users. When you search for a key word, YouTube brings up results that have been uploaded to their website only, rather than searching the entire web for related results like search engines such as Google and Bing. According to Wikipedia (also, not a search engine because it is self-contained) the definition of a search engine is:
“A web search engine is designed to search for information on the World Wide Web. The search results are usually presented in a list of results and are commonly called hits. The information may consist of web pages, images, information and other types of files. Some search engines also mine data available in databases or open directories. Unlike Web directories, which are maintained by human editors, search engines operate algorithmically or are a mixture of algorithmic and human input.”
When searching for the key words “desk chair” on top rated “Search Engines” the results are:
Google: 13,100,000 results
Bing: 15,700,000 results
YouTube: 4,290 results
Yahoo: (number of results not given)
Do these even compare? Why is YouTube considered a search engine rather than a database?
(Wikipedia: A database is an integrated collection of logically-related records or files consolidated into a common pool that provides data for one or more multiple uses. One way of classifying databases involves the type of content, for example: bibliographic, full-text, numeric, image)
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