How to Search YouTube by Date
By Kevin Lee
Learn to use search filters effectively and you can save time while increasing productivity. If you search for a broad topic on YouTube, such as “politics,” you may wind up with hundreds or thousands of videos to review. But if you have a specific date range in mind, you can apply a date filter to your query and limit your results to a specific time period. You can do that from YouTube or from Google's regular search page.
Search from YouTube
Step 1
Visit YouTube and enter a search query in the search box. YouTube returns a list of results that match your query.
Step 2
Click the "Filters" drop-down box and review the list of filtering options in the Updated Date section. These items include "This Week," "Today" and "Last Hour."
Step 3
Click the option you'd like to use to filter the results. YouTube narrows the list and displays videos within the time range you selected. It also adds a new button next to the drop-down menu. For instance, if you choose the "This Week" filter, you'll see a "This Week" button. When you want to cancel the filter, click that button and YouTube will display your original results list.
Search from Google
Step 1
Visit the Google search page and type "[My_Query] site:youtube.com" (without the brackets or quotation marks).
Replace "My_Query" with your own query. For instance, if you want to find videos about cameras, type "cameras site:youtube.com."
Step 2
Press "Enter" to view a list of results. The "site:youtube.com" parameter tells Google to only return results from YouTube.
Step 3
Click "Search Tools" and then click "Any Time" to view a list of date filtering options. These options include "Past 24 hours" and "Past Year."
Step 4
Click an option to filter the results. Click one of the results to visit YouTube and view your video.
Tips
- Once you apply a filter after searching on YouTube, you will see a value near the top of the window that displays the number of videos YouTube found. That number decreases as you make your date search range smaller. If you don't get results using a small date range, such as "Last Hour," try another filter that has a larger range. You can also try searching later because people may upload new videos that fall within the time span you seek.
- If you search from Google and click "Any Time," you will see a filtering option named "Custom Range" in the list of options. Click that if you'd like to search using a custom date range. A calendar opens and displays a "From" text box and a "To" text box. Type a starting date in the "From" text box, an ending date in the "To" box and click "Go" to limit your search to the range you selected. You could also click dates on the calendar to choose starting and ending dates.
Writer Bio
After majoring in physics, Kevin Lee began writing professionally in 1989 when, as a software developer, he also created technical articles for the Johnson Space Center. Today this urban Texas cowboy continues to crank out high-quality software as well as non-technical articles covering a multitude of diverse topics ranging from gaming to current affairs.