In what it says is an attempt to facilitate content discovery in light of the fact that its programming library now has close to 65,000 videos from over 200 content partners, Hulu, the free, ad-supported broadband video venture co-owned by The Walt Disney Company (ABC), NBC Universal and News Corp. (Fox), has launched an Advanced Search functionality.
The functionality, which is accessed via a link at the bottom of the Hulu.com homepage or a link that appears at the top left of any search results page, allows users to refine their searches in a number of ways and take advantage of various common search operators. They can, for example, use "and," "or" and "not" search operators, as well as a phrase search option (enables searches of phrases enclosed in quotation marks). They can also search within specific fields, such as "Show Title," "Video Title," and "Description," or opt to limit their results to videos with closed captioning. In addition, the Advanced Search service incorporates a "family-friendly" filter that excludes content that is rated TV-14, PG-13, TV-MA, R, NC-17, NSFW, or NR. "If you search for videos on Hulu often, we offer search operators that correspond with each of the fields in our Advanced Search menu, so you can type in a complete search query directly from the search bar," Hulu editor, Rebecca Harper, wrote on the company's corporate blog. "For instance, you can use the plus sign ("+") to add keywords to your search string. For example, +jim +pam +wedding calls up videos related to Jim and Pam’s wedding on 'The Office' earlier this season."
Last month (see the article published on itvt.com, November 24th), Hulu announced that it was launching a user-generated/crowd-sourced tagging system to facilitate content discovery, because its video catalog has now "grown to a size where tags will prove extremely useful."
In other Hulu news: According to figures released by ComScore last week, the service in October set a new record for monthly views, delivering 856 million videos and accounting for 3.1% of US broadband video watching. The service is the second most used broadband video platform in the US--the first being, of course, Google/YouTube, which accounted for 38% of US broadband video watching. On average, ComScore said, Hulu users watched 20.1 videos on the site in October, representing another record. CNET has more detail.
