MW Geofind

MW Geofind is a tool for finding geotagged YouTube videos.

URL

https://mattw.io/youtube-geofind/location

Description

MW Geofind is an online tool designed for identifying YouTube videos tagged with a geographical location.

How to use

Users search for YouTube videos mainly by keywords or location (i.e., location name or coordinates), with additional filters by timeframe, video duration, and language.

  • To optimize the keyword search, see documentation for YouTube keyword operators.

  • When searching by location, users can set a radius of up to 1000km.

  • Search results are visualized on a map, which shows icons from the YouTube channels. See example below.

Search results for Youtube videos geotagged within 20km of the Hungarian State Opera House in Budapest. A radius of 20km is shown (in the green circle). Each icon represents a Youtube channel. Note that the map also shows some videos geotagged beyond the 20km radius.

  • Under Share, a link can be copied and shared so that others can access the search results.

  • Under Geotags, users can view the search results listed, including thumbnail, video title, upload date, duration, and an excerpt of the video description. Due to restrictions from YouTube, an export function is not directly available.

How to access video metadata

Users can click "View metadata" to view the video's metadata in json. A new tab will open in "MW Metadata - Bulk", another tool by the same developer.

View metadata - marked in blue

Here are excerpts of the json data available.

Understanding geotags in YouTube videos.

Video creators can choose to specify a location during the upload process or afterwards. Typically, video creators start typing in a place name or address, and select their chosen location from a dropdown list.

Note that video creators can easily provide an imprecise location (e.g., entering "United States" instead of "Hard Rock Stadium, Miami") or a misleading location. It is common for content creators to tag their videos to a different location as a tactic to make the video more discoverable, or to target audiences in a specific country. (The effectiveness of such tactics is subject to debate.) Importantly, the geotag is not derived from the video's EXIF data or the IP address of the upload. Given these caveats, researchers should use the search results from MW Geofind as one of many reference points and seek to independently verify any location information.

Available format

MW Geofind is available in the web browser: https://mattw.io/youtube-geofind/location

Find the code and latest commits on Github: https://github.com/mattwright324/youtube-geofind

Similar tools

YouTube's search can perform a similar search by location, with several disadvantages.

How to do a location search on Youtube

  1. Enter a location name in the search bar.

  2. Click "Filters".

  3. Select "Location".

Some disadvantages compared to MW Geofind:

  • On YouTube, the user can only search by location name and cannot search by coordinates.

  • On YouTube, geotags are in the video creator's chosen language. E.g., a French speaker may geotag their video "États-Unis" instead of "United States". If searching on YouTube by location name, the correct language needs to be used to find the geotagged videos. In comparison, searching by coordinates in MW Geofind avoids this issue.

  • On YouTube, the time frame selected must be recent (i.e., the choices are limited to "last hour", "today", "this week", "this month", "this year"). MW Geofind allows more flexibility (e.g., between Jan 1 to Feb 15, 2017), enabling searches for older videos.

See the MW Geofind documentation for more information.

Cost

Level of difficulty

Requirements

  • Web: any web browser.

Limitations

  • API rate limits: MW Geofind is a popular tool that frequently (almost daily) exhausts YouTube's API rate limits. The rate limits are reset daily around 9am US Pacific time. Therefore, users who find MW Geofind unresponsive or not functioning should check back again in the morning, Pacific time.

  • Location information may be inaccurate: MW Geofind makes an initial search and then makes additional calls to get recordingDetails and locationDescription from the YouTube API. Users should understand that the coordinates do not necessarily refer to a precise location, as the same coordinates can refer to a country, city, landmark, address, or point of interest. Again, users should seek to independently verify the location information. Please see discussion in MW Geofind project wiki.

Ethical Considerations

Privacy: Video creators could have deliberately or inadvertently provided location information and other identifying details in their video content, geotag, or other metadata. When using information from publicly uploaded videos, researchers should take into account the context of their research or the timing of their publication, giving full respect to the privacy of the video creator or any individuals appearing in the video.

Guides and articles

Official Wiki from the developer

Tutorials

How to find geotagged videos on YouTube | Geofind OSINT Tool Tutorial (2023). • Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3WdeRiy1dvI • Article: https://gralhix.com/2022/04/21/how-to-find-geotagged-videos-on-youtube/

Tool provider

Matthew Wright https://mattw.io/ - United States

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Page maintainer

river_n

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