Youtube API - worse results than by searching on youtube.com

Question

I am building last.fm+youtube mashup and I am having trouble retrieving righ results from youtube search.

E.g. http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos?q=Gedz+Gucci%20Gucci%20(feat.%20Joda)&orderBy=relevance

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=Gedz+Gucci%20Gucci%20(feat.%20Joda)&oq=Gedz+Gucci%20Gucci%20(feat.%20Joda)

The track I am interested in is on the second place in youtube.com search. How I can make api results look as much similar to youtube.com search?

Answer 1

The method YouTube uses for it's provided search results on the home page includes Related Videos which is based on a proprietary algorithm.

Unfortunately, this proprietary method is not yet available in their API (v1 or current v2) which is why you don't have the same results provided.

The YouTube API Page shows how to use the Related Videos API feature, but only for a single video since it's limited to that use.

I've seen various questions/replies that come and go on the forum about this issue, like this ignored one.

Consider using the Related Videos based on a single video, which the API does support.

Example of that usage for YouTube Video Gedz - Gucci Gucci gość. Joda is:

https://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos/oepPdNKzxk0/related?v=2

You will see 25 results (default quantity when not specified in query) that are similar but not exact as the single video's YouTube page. Different algorithm's are at play here too, but this method is the best that's currently available.

My untested solution for your project goal is as follows:
1. Use current method to acquire video ID feeds.
2. If the results are less than the amount required, use the returned results first Video ID as a reference.
3. The Video ID reference (just a single video) is then used to perform another query for Related Videos. 4. You can then combine both query's to create a final list of Video ID's which to use.