Search is not dead.... Enter YouTube Topics Beta!

a post ago i said that Google was 'holding the fort' in search.
Well, looks like the giant is not a big elephant. it certainly has not lost it's edge, backed by smart engineers who are given time to explore their own side projects, the latest one is not mind-blowing, but is a natural progression towards the more social aspect of search that has been the trend nowadays.
first we had bing integrate its results into facebook. we had msn and facebook link up. we have yahoo social ads. we have twitter search, of course.
and now, we have Youtube Topics.

An introduction to YouTube Topics
Youtube Topics is something like organic search for video.
when you enter a keyword search, popular topics are displayed just below.
These topics are based on frequently used descriptors that youtube users 'tag' their video with when they upload.

Youtube statement:

Q: How are topics generated?
We use many different sources including frequently used uploader keywords, common search queries, playlist names, and even sources outside of YouTube such as Wikipedia articles.

Q: Will I see topics on all searches?
You might not see topics on some searches. Our goal is to show topics when they are useful and we will continue working on finding useful topics for more of your searches.

Q: How do I leave the experiment? 

From the search page, click on the "Turn off" link next to “YouTube Topics experiment”.


This can give you quite interesting data, on what topics are the most popularly associated with a certain keyword.
A sample search for 'ibanez', for example, yields an interesting find -- that the artists steve vai, paul gilbert, joe satrani, john petrucci are most associated with ibanez.

Then, I searched for 'les paul'. this time, artists zakk wylde, slash, chet atkins are popularly linked with 'les paul'.

This can give valuable data mining insights on who have the top of mind share for a product category.

try it yourself!