Everyone loves videos – the average person spends 2.5 hours a day watching videos online. And business owners and marketers should note: 69% of consumers prefer to watch a video that explains a product or service. Only 18% would rather read a text-based article and 4% would prefer an infographic.
So how do you find a video you want to watch?
And when you create videos , how do you make sure that internet users can find your video content?
Just like you use Google or other search engines to find interesting websites or blog posts, you can use a search engine to find videos.
This article will show you how to search for videos and introduce you to the main video search engines.
How can I search for a video?
There are different types of video search engines that you can use to find a video online.
First, you can use the major search engines like Google. All major search engines have a video search option that allows you to find videos from various sources around the web. There are usually filters to help you find videos of a specific duration, quality, and more.
You can also use search engines built into video platforms like YouTube . On YouTube, for example, you can find the informative videos we have on our own Kinsta YouTube channel .
Finally, there are also specialized video search engines . For example, you can use Social Searcher to search for videos on social media, or Shutterstock to search for stock footage.
Is there a reverse video search engine?
You may be familiar with reverse image search from Google and other search engines.
Reverse image search lets you enter an image file to find the same or similar images online.
No search engine can search an entire video in reverse order, but you can use reverse image search engines to accomplish the same thing. Take a screenshot of the video or use the thumbnail as the search image.
The search engines we recommend for reverse video search are:
- Bing
- Berify
- Shutterstock
Are there mobile video search engines?
54.8% of global internet traffic is via mobile devices.
If you’re searching for videos on a smartphone or tablet, you need a search engine that’s mobile-friendly, and you want the videos to display well on your device.
Luckily, almost all of the video search engines on our list have mobile apps. With the Google app, you can easily perform regular video searches and reverse video searches using photos from the camera or your device’s storage.
Top 16 Video Search Engines
Let’s check out our top 16 video search engines.
1.Google
It should come as no surprise that Google is one of the best video search engines.
Google is great for all types of searches, including videos. You can find Google video search below the search bar and other search options like news and images.
Google has many filters you can use to find the right video, e.g. B:
- duration of the video
- Date range video was released
- quality (any quality or high quality)
- Whether it is subtitled
- Source (website)
If you go to Settings and select Advanced Search, you’ll get a few more options, like searching for videos in a specific language.
Google mobile video search
As mentioned earlier, you can use a reverse image search engine to search for videos.
Thanks to Google Lens, Google has a robust mobile solution for this. With it you can take a picture with your phone’s camera, crop it easily and find similar pictures and videos.
2. YouTube
YouTube is not a traditional video search engine as it only searches videos on YouTube.
But considering that more than 500 hours of content is uploaded to YouTube every minute , you have a good chance of finding what you’re looking for on the platform.
Google owns YouTube, so its search capabilities are top-notch.
Like Google video search, you can filter YouTube by duration and publication date. You can also search for videos in the following categories:
- live
- 4K
- HD
- Subtitles/CC
- Creative Commons
- 360°
- VR180
- 3D
- HDR
- Location
- Bought
In addition to videos, you can also search for channels, playlists, and movies.
3. Bing
Google is a much more popular search engine than Bing , with an 87% market share compared to Bing’s 7%.
But when it comes to video, don’t write Bing off. In some ways, Bing video search outshines even Google.
Like Google, Bing has filters for duration, date, and source.
They also include quality – but while Google only searches for “any quality” and “high quality”, Bing has the following options:
- All
- Less than 360p
- 360p or higher
- 480p or higher
- 720p or higher
- 1080p or higher
Bing also lets you filter whether the videos are free or paid.
The Bing Video search results page (SERP) is more visual than Google’s, with large thumbnail images that show a few seconds preview when you mouse over them. If you click the link, you won’t be taken to the video’s website, you can watch the video directly on Bing.
4. DuckDuckGo
Not everyone is happy with traditional search engines like Google and Bing.
Concerned about privacy, many have turned to DuckDuckGo . This search engine doesn’t track your search history, blocks external trackers, and connects you to the encrypted version of a website whenever possible.
If you don’t want to put your data in Google’s hands, we have good news: DuckDuckGo also has video search.
DuckDuckGo lets you search by video duration, resolution, date, and license type (Creative Commons or YouTube Standard) .
A great feature of this service is that you can change the region of your search to see the results as they would appear in the country of your choice.
5. Dailymotion
Dailymotion is a video hosting service with over 300 million users, making it the second largest provider after YouTube.
Like YouTube, this “search engine” only returns results from its own platform. Search both YouTube and Dailymotion for a broader list of results.
Dailymotion’s filters are limited to duration and upload date.
6.Facebook
Another source of millions of videos is Facebook .
Facebook is the third largest website on the internet, behind Google and YouTube. Facebook Watch, Facebook’s video sharing and watching section, is visited by more than 1.25 billion people every month .
You can search videos on the watch page or enter a term in the main search bar and select “video”. The videos can be filtered by the release date and you can choose to only see live videos, music, shows or your own saved videos want.
7. Dogpile
Dogpile was founded in 1996 as a metasearch engine that aggregates results from Yahoo!, Lycos, Excite, WebCrawler, Infoseek, AltaVista, HotBot, WhatUseek, and World Wide Web Worm.
While some old-school search engines no longer exist, Dogpile still exists. Today, it brings you results from a list of search engines that includes Google, Yahoo! and Yandex belong.
Dogpile’s video search doesn’t have any filtering options, but it’s a good way to ensure you’re getting results from a variety of sources.
8. Veoh
Veoh is a video sharing website that was founded in 2005, the same year as YouTube. It was one of the most popular video sites on the web in the mid-2000s, but then it fell out of favor, eventually filing for bankruptcy and changing hands.
Veoh can’t keep up with sites like YouTube and Vimeo these days, and a lot of its content is outdated. But she has one cool feature that makes her worthy of this list.
In addition to duration and genre, Veoh also allows you to search by video language and subtitle language. So, if you want, you can find all comedy videos in Bulgarian with English subtitles.
None of the other search engines on our list can do that.
The videos on Veoh include user-generated content as well as movies and TV shows for streaming.
9. Berify
We’ve already mentioned several search engines that you can use to perform reverse video searches. They all require you to use an image from the video.
Berify is an incredibly comprehensive reverse image search because it searches for your video screenshot on Google, Bing and other major search engines.
To use Berify you need to create an account. The free plan lets you browse five images in reverse order.
10. Vimeo
Vimeo is the third largest video platform after YouTube and Dailymotion.
Vimeo doesn’t have as many videos as YouTube, but the video and audio quality is better. Sometimes you’ll find the same video on both platforms, only with a higher bitrate on Vimeo.
If you’re looking for a video on Vimeo, you can filter by:
- category
- duration of the video
- Upload date
- Whether the video is live
- Whether it is a 360° video
- Whether the video was chosen by the staff
- Free or paid
- type of license
Vimeo is also an excellent alternative for marketers and content creators .
11. Social Searchers
Social media platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Tumblr and others have video content.
Social Searcher lets you search multiple platforms at once.
You can choose which of the 11 sources you want to search and filter by sentiment (whether the post contains more positive or negative words) and language.
Social Searcher also provides analytics for the aggregated search results, so you can see who the top posters are, the typical mood of the video posts, common keywords in the posts, and more.
Social Searcher misses a lot of videos. For the most comprehensive results, you should search each platform individually.
But Social Searcher is a good way to get an overview of what videos are available on a topic across all social media.
12. Ecosia
What if you could do something for the environment while sitting in front of your screen?
Ecosia makes it possible. Ecosia uses the ad revenue from your searches to plant trees in places that need them. According to Ecosia, it takes about 45 searches to plant a tree.
Ecosia is powered by Microsoft Bing, so your results will likely be similar.
You can filter by resolution, duration and time of publication.
A counter shows you how many trees have been planted with the help of Ecosia users.
13. Yandex
Yandex is Russia’s largest search engine and the fifth largest in the world after Google, Bing, Yahoo! (which is operated by Bing) and Baidu.
Yandex was designed specifically for the Russian market, so you may get a slightly different mix of results than you would with Google or Bing. But you can also use Yandex in English.
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When you search for videos on Yandex, you can filter by duration, quality (HD or not), and time of publication (recent or not).
The search engine also offers a “See Also” section. These videos were viewed by people who also viewed the videos in your SERP.
14. Baidu
Baidu is the largest Chinese search engine and the fourth largest search engine in the world. Competition in China isn’t nearly as fierce: Baidu has a 70.5% market share versus Google’s 1.6%
Baidu doesn’t have an English version, and the results are heavily biased toward Chinese sources even if you search for an English search term. But if you are interested in Chinese videos or want to get a glimpse of how the Chinese market is perceived, Baidu is your best bet.
You can use Google Translate to understand the interface.
Baidu doesn’t have any video filtering options.
15. Swisscows
Swisscows is a privacy-friendly search engine that offers website video searches. Like DuckDuckGo, it doesn’t collect your data or create a search history.
Also, no pornographic content will be indexed or displayed.
You can filter by date, duration, quality, and aspect ratio (widescreen or standard).
16. Shutterstock
Need a royalty-free video for your website?
Shutterstock is a place where you can browse and buy stock footage .
You can also search for videos based on an image. Drag your image into the search bar and Shutterstock will suggest stock videos with a similar theme.
Which is the best video search engine?
The best video search engine depends on your needs. Here are our recommendations:
- Best Video Search Engine Overall: Bing
- Best search engine for mobile videos: Google
- Best reverse video search engine: Berify
- Best Private Search Engine: DuckDuckGo
- Best Social Media Video Search Engine : Social Searcher