Let a YouTube RSS feed keep you updated

I use Google Alerts to stay on top of my company’s image in the news and blogosphere. I automatically recieve an e-mail every time something new pops up, so rarely do I have to navigate to a search page and look for myself. Using Google Reader, I also use an RSS feed from Summize to inform me of Twitter mentions.

I like having updated search results come to me, in as few locations as possible, so I don’t like visiting YouTube and running a new search to find out if any new videos have popped up that I should be interested in.

So here’s a cool trick. Although YouTube doesn’t appear to offer any RSS feeds for search results, you can use this URL:

http://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos?orderby=updated&vq=search+term

Take this URL, replace “search+term” with what you’d like to search YouTube for, and add it to your favorite news or RSS reader (like Google Reader). Your reader will update you whenever a new search result shows up on YouTube. (Remember to only include quotation marks in the search term if you want the words to be searched as a single phrase. Use a plus sign to connect words, instead of a space.)

For more interesting YouTube feeds available, read the Google Operating System blog.

Posted in Search Engines, Social Aggregators, Video |
Tagged with google alerts, google reader, rss, Summize, Twitter, YouTube