With video search serving as one of the hot specialty features in the world of search engines right now, there's been an ongoing race between the major players to introduce new and better video search features. From Google's updated video search library featuring popular TV shows for purchase to increased news coverage of traditional search turned video search engine Blinkx, it's clear that video search is shaping up to be a big issue for the year.

That's why AOL made it clear through their purchase of Truveo last December that they've come to the table ready to play. AOL will be launching it's latest round of updates to AOL Video Search this week by showcasing several key additions to their current offerings. The newly updated AOL Video Search will now feature Hi-Q (DVD-quality) video clips and a more streamlined search interface.

The company will also begin integrating the technology they purchased from Truveo by introducing a new technology dubbed "visual crawling" that AOL claims will revolutionize the video search industry.

From a company statement:

With this technology, our search engine will be able to find and index all of the great high-quality video on the Web that traditional search engines have never been able to find. The 1.8 million videos indexed through Truveo, will expand our existing archive of 20,000+ original and licensed videos, and the 2.5 million videos from the Web indexed through Singingfish.

The biggest push for AOL will come sometime next month. AOL has announced that they will be adding 14,000 classic TV shows owned by Warner Bros. to their video archives. The videos will be available for free and will be supported by ads. While a full list of shows has not yet been released, USA Today reports that classics like Welcome Back Kotter and Battlestar Galactica will be among those being added to the index.

With the lines between traditional forms of entertainment and the Internet slowly blurring, the ability to make an early capture of the video search audience is likely to play a key role in the future success of any of the major engines. Google and Yahoo! have both made it clear that they intend to become major players in the space and AOL's new announcement shows that they intend to expand beyond AOL-owned SingingFish in order to more closely integrate true video and multi-media search into their popular portal site.

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About the Author

Jennifer Laycock is the Editor of Search Engine Guide, an educational web site aimed at translating the search marketing world into something that small business owners can understand. Jennifer specializes in common sense search engine marketing, viral marketing and customer outreach via social media and blogs. A former search marketing consultant and in-house trainer, Jennifer’s clients have included companies like Verizon, American Greetings and Highlights for Children. Her primary clients now are a little girl named Elnora and a little boy named Emmitt.

Jennifer Laycock is the Editor of Search Engine Guide, an educational web site aimed at translating the search marketing world into something that small business owners can understand. Jennifer specializes in common sense search engine marketing, viral marketing and customer outreach via social media and blogs. A former search marketing consultant and in-house trainer, Jennifer’s clients have included companies like Verizon, American Greetings and Highlights for Children. Her primary clients now are a little girl named Elnora and a little boy named Emmitt.