The mystery of videos disappearing from youtube's search results

Ever since late 2009, I've noticed that some of my videos mysteriously disappear from youtube's search results, and I am at a loss to figure out why.

This usually occurs when there are other uploads of the same video (almost always from a different source, though) on youtube.  My hunch is that youtube's search algorithm mistakenly believes that my disappearing videos are 'duplicate' uploads of videos already on youtube.  But occasionally this has happened to me when someone re-uploads one of "my" videos, several months after I uploaded the video.

I've also seen it happen where someone has added one of my videos to a public playlist, and their playlist appears in the search results, rather than my video.

But just in the last week or so, after thinking that the disappearing-video thing may have finally been 'corrected' (for new videos I upload, anyway), I've noticed that some of my videos have again disappeared.

My upload of Sabrina's 'Sexy Girl' disappeared from the search results (when you search for 'sabrina sexy girl') in the last week.  Yet it was appearing within the first 10 search results for 'sabrina sexy girl' last week, and had clocked up over 3000 views in 4 months.

I also uploaded better quality versions of these videos, which were already on youtube, uploaded by others, and they too have suddenly disappeared from the search results, despite appearing for several months:

Occasionally, a video of mine that has disappeared from the search results miraculous re-appears; sometimes years later.  From what I can gather, this normally only happens when someone's account (with the 'duplicate' upload, erroneously decided by the search algorithm) is suspended or if they remove the 'duplicate' video.

Unfortunately, these problems with the search feature don't exactly encourage myself and others to upload better-quality versions of videos that are already on youtube.  I really wish google would sort these problems out!

Obscure Toni Basil video gets 30,000 views in 2 days on youtube

I just checked one of my youtube accounts, and saw on my analytics page that my total view count was down 78% the past 30 days compared to the previous 30-day period.

Curious to see what was the cause of this (e.g. did one of my videos get a sudden, massive number of views for some reason last month?), I discovered that my upload for Toni Basil's 'Nobody' (the flop follow-up to 'Mickey') went from 27 views in one day (around its normal daily viewcount) to ~18.5k the next day, then ~12k the day after that, before plummeting back down again to 20-something views the next day.

Investigating further, I saw that almost all of the 30k views in those 2 days came from the US, linked from a yahoo 'news' story about Toni Basil turning 70.

Anyway, the main reason for me posting this here was this interesting tidbit from the article:

It was hardly as if she could financially coast on the success of "Mickey," which continues to be the DJ's choice any time some ‘80s tunes are called for on the dance floor. "I don’t think my story is an unusual story for a lot of music performers," she told an English TV interviewer recently. "But I think that since 1982, worldwide, I have probably seen less than 3,000 American dollars in royalties."


I know Toni didn't write 'Mickey' (or 'Kitty' as it was originally known), but I'm still surprised to see that she's made so little money in royalties from such a massive, still-played-today hit.