The Second Biggest Search Engine

The Search Engine wars continue to rage on.

We all know that Google dominates and that Bing (Microsoft‘s search engine), Yahoo! and Ask.com continue to hold their own. What many people fail to realize is that if you look at the overall amount of queries/searches done across all of the major websites, portals, etc…, that the second largest search engine is not Bing or Yahoo!… it’s actually YouTube.

We do like searching for answers and seeing a video response to our queries.

Does that seem hard to believe? YouTube (which is owned by Google) is the second largest search engine. Back when I was having my conversation with Julien Smith (co-author of Trust Agents along with Chris Brogan and a co-host on Media Hacks) about ways in which I could get the word out (even more) about this Six Pixels of Separation Blog and Podcast, Smith also recommended taking all of the audio interviews from the Podcast and releasing them on YouTube (along with some semblance of a visual slideshow by grabbing photos of the guests from places that allow it). It seemed like a lot of work, so when I kept on prodding him for why, he was the one who reminded me of the magnitude of traffic and searches that YouTube represents in the overall scope of the Internet and media (more on my conversation with Julien right here: Five Reasons Why This Blog Is A Failure).

It’s more than just the traffic that online video generates.

It’s also about the education. Recently, I was looking for a strong tutorial on the basics of Keynote. The default thought is to look at both Blogs and books to see if a Dummies Guide is too basic or what the options are. After doing a couple of generic searches online, I came across this amazing video series/Podcast by EmpowerMac called, Keynote For Beginners, which is a twelve-part video series (each episode running about ten minutes). Amazing content, easy to watch and simple to follow along to.

YouTube is the new encyclopedia.

Not sure how to wash a dog? Change a diaper? Jailbreak an iPhone? Build a deck? Do a magic trick? Play the solo in Van Halen‘s ‘Running With The Devil’? Understand what Google TV will be? Whatever random question you have, someone, somewhere has created a video with the answer and the tutorial on how to do it.

It begs the question: how well are you (and the brands you represent) leveraging the power of online video to really connect to your consumers as a thought leader and a brand that cares?