San Francisco — AOL’s Truveo, which boasts itself as the second largest video search engine both in the US and worldwide, is releasing a global revamp tonight across 17 of its country-specific sites, including in the U.S, where it is aiming for a less-cluttered, almost Google-like home page. The company says the update makes it easier than ever to find video on the web.
Looking to seize the video search market share from Google Video, Blinkx, and Microsoft Corp.’s new Bing site, AOL said the revamped Truveo indexes more than 350 million online videos. It also signed an agreement with a top U.S. Spanish-language broadcaster Univision to add Truveo’s video search capabilities to Univision.com.
According to survey leader comScore, Truveo leads the second-largest video search engine worldwide, just trailing behind Google, with 25.6 million unique visitors, according to comScore, and the second largest in the U.S., with 5.1 million unique visitors, per Truveo’s internal numbers.
Old Truveo Image here..
For the time being, online video directories seems to remain fairly small, especially as YouTube and Hulu solidify their dominance. But Truveo CEO Pete Kocks anticipates that more challengers to those sites are in the making, and if that happens, Truveo could benefit as users turn to guides to navigate a more crowded field.
The revamped Truveo contains much less clutter than its old site. It features a search box on the top of the page, with video thumbnails from five different categories — news, sports, TV shows, music, and “most Twittered” — running horizontally below the search box.
AOL claims that the new Truveo also renders faster load times, and it places a bigger emphasis on finding professionally produced videos. The site also contains new tools that allow users to share videos on ,Bebo, Facebook, MySpace, and StumbleUpon.
New Truveo Image here…
The results page is divided into three columns. The left hand side presents a list of sites where results have been indexed. The middle indicates the video results, with tabs to sort by popularity and other aspects. There are suggestions for search refinement where applicable. On the right is a display ad box with a focus on a particular channel underneath.
“With the launch of the new Truveo.com, we are showcasing the breadth of content discoverable in our search engine,” says Pete Kocks, who is President of Truveo, as well as Vice President of AOL. “With thousands of channels and TV shows in our index, Truveo has long been recognized as a leader in video search technology, and today we are building on that reputation with an improved experience that makes discovering and sharing video content even easier and more personalized.”
Truveo sites use localized ranking algorithms, which indicates that results will be customized to the user on a local level.
Truveo also has an iPhone app in additionto to the site optimized for mobile web surfers. They are certainly delivering the value and their increasing traffic is an indication that they are offering something that internet users really want: comprehensive video search.
AOL now offers localized Truveo search engines in 17 countries and territories. Its new additions are Australia, Brazil, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Italy, Japan, Korea, Mexico, The Netherlands, Russia, Spain, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and the US.