It seems that Google has been showing links to web pages when people search for topics on YouTube. A Reddit users discovered this and posted the following screenshot:
As you can see from the example above, you can see how a single web page results breaks up a search results page, which is showing a lot of videos.
Users have the ability to visit the page that YouTube is displaying, or they can follow the link to conduct a search directly on Google.
It seems that Google is taking it upon itself to assist users with search results, as there isn’t any indication that there are any sponsorships going on on the page.
Based on responses received on the r/Google subreddit, it seems that this feature isn’t going to be well received by users.
Here is what people are thinking about web search results on YouTube:
“That’s really annoying. If I want a google search, I’d go to google. They should not treat users like tech illiterate people.”
“That’s just bad. Who would want such a feature? I hope it’s optional.”
“That would just ruin the YouTube experience. Haven’t they done enough with moving the comments.”
“If it only comes up when there are not many results, it’s okay I guess. But if I search something with millions of results I wanna scroll down infinitely :D”
For the sake of hearing from people on both sides, here are some arguments for why the feature might not be as bad as people are saying.
“I don’t know man, sometimes I’m looking for a tutorial but I want a video explaining it, and if it doesn’t exists now I have the option to do a quick Google search in the app.”
“The problem is when I need an answer to a question, and I don’t want to watch someone’s 7 minutes of filler before they answer it, and then ask us to like and subscribe in every way possible for 3 minutes.”
“I might like this. I often do a back to back search like that.”
Although there are valid arguments for and against the feature, it looks like there are more people who are against it than for it.
It’s also not clear how widely rolled out the test is.