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Searching for Video? Google Pushes YouTube Over Rivals

WSJ – “Facebook and other competitors host the same videos, but engineers have made changes that effectively preference YouTube—owned by Google—over other video sources. Journal tests show YouTube usually ends up first and takes most of the slots in Google Search video carousels, prime results real estate. When choosing the best video clips to promote from around the web, Alphabet Inc.’s Google gives a secret advantage to one source in particular: itself. Or, more specifically, its giant online-video service, YouTube..The Journal conducted Google searches for a selection of other videos and channels that are available on YouTube as well as on competitors’ platforms. The YouTube versions were significantly more prominent in the results in the vast majority of cases. This isn’t by accident. Engineers at Google have made changes that effectively preference YouTube over other video sources, according to people familiar with the matter. Google executives in recent years made decisions to prioritize YouTube on the first page of search results, in part to drive traffic to YouTube rather than to competitors, and also to give YouTube more leverage in business deals with content providers seeking traffic for their videos, one of those people said. “All else being equal, YouTube will be first,” the person said. A Google spokeswoman, Lara Levin, said there is no preference given to YouTube or any other video provider in Google search. “Our systems use a number of signals from the web to understand what results people find most relevant and helpful for a given query,” Ms. Levin said. She declined to comment on the specific examples cited in this article…”

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