Use YouTube As a Content Source
Index YouTube videos and make them searchable for your employees and customers. SearchUnify can index the videos uploaded on your channel and the channels that you have subscribed to.
PERMISSIONS
You have to have a YouTube account.
To index subtitles and comments on your YouTube videos, allow SearchUnify to "see, edit, and permanently delete your YouTube videos, ratings, comments, and captions" during authentication.
With Google OAuth 2.0-based authentication in new SearchUnify instances, an API rate limit of 10,000 grants per day is applicable. It might impact the crawling in SearchUnify. To manage it, try turning captions off to crawl up to 4800 videos.
We require the permission to access the following API scopes:
youtube.force-ssl is used to fetch comments and subtitles on your videos.
youtube.readonly is used to access channel, playlist, and video data.
userinfo.profile is required for OAuth connection and is used to access the basic profile information of a user.
Establish a Connection
- Navigate to Content Sources and click Add New Content Sources.
- From the search box, find YouTube and click Add.
-
Under the Authentication tab, enter the required details.
A) SearchUnify instances on Q1 '24 or newer versions. Give your content source a Name and select the Language. Also, enter Client ID and Client Secret of your Google account.
Refer to this doc on how to get the Google Client ID and Client Secret - Obtain Google Client ID and Client Secret.
B) SearchUnify instances older to Q1 '24. Give your content source a Name and select the Language, and click Connect.
- If you are already logged into YouTube (or Google), you will be prompted to the permissions screen. Click Allow.
The connection is successfully set up if you see a "Connection Successful" message. Click Next to proceed to Setting Frequency.
Google hasn't verified this app
If you encounter an error where Google indicates that the app has not been verified, please disregard the warning and continue with the authentication process. This issue is slated for resolution in future updates.
Set Up Crawl Frequency
The first crawl is always manual and is performed after configuring the content source. In Choose A Date, select a date to start crawling; the data created after the selected date will be crawled. For now, keep the frequency to its default value Never and click Set and move to the next section.
Select Fields and Channels for Indexing
YouTube videos have fields, such as titles, descriptions, and channel names. You can index them all or a selection of them. This section shows how to find fields for indexing in By Content Type. After that, the process to pick channels for indexing through By Channels is described.
Related
- To start selection, click
. 
- You will discover that all available fields have been selected. The safest path forward is to click Apply. However, if you are an advanced user or a developer, you can remove fields, such as channel_id and comment, and change the Label and Type of a field. Neither change is recommended for most users.
- Clicking Apply brings you back to By Channels where next to
is 
. 
-
is used to find and replace values in a field. Think of it this way. Your flagship product has recently been named from "SearchUnify" to "s.e.a.r.c.h.u.n.i.f.y". You want the search result titles to display s.e.a.r.c.h.u.n.i.f.y immediately. to the rescue. Click it, find title in Name, write the regular expression for the old product name in regex, and the regular expression for its replacement in replace. Click Add and then Save. Each instance of "SearchUnify" in title on the search results page will be swapped with "s.e.a.r.c.h.u.n.i.f.y". It's important to mention here that makes changes in the SearchUnify index, not YouTube. On clicking the end-users will continue to encounter good old "SearchUnify."
- Navigate to By Channels and use the index to find channels. CCTV is listed in C and SearchUnify in S. The search function can be used to find a channel from a long list.
- Check Enable and click Save.
Crawl Playlists Instead of Channels
An alternative method to work with YouTube is to index playlists instead of channels. By Playlists can replace By Channels if you write to support@searchunify.com. By Playlists gives you more flexibility in crawling because you can limit search to the videos inside selected playlists. When By Playlists is active the By Channels tab disappears.
Related
After the First Crawl
Return to the Content Sources screen and click 
in Actions. The number of indexed documents is updated after the crawl is complete. You can view crawl progress in 
in Actions. Documentation on crawl progress is in View Crawl Logs.
Once the first crawl is complete, click in Actions open the content source for editing, and set a crawl frequency.
- In Choose a Date, click
to fire up a calendar and select a date. Only the data after the selected date is indexed.
- Use the Frequency dropdown to select how often SearchUnify should index the data. For illustration, the frequency has been set to Weekly and Tuesday has been chosen as the crawling day. Whenever the Frequency is other than Never, a third dropdown appears where you can specify the interval. Also, whenever Frequency is set to Hourly, then manual crawls are disabled.
- Click Set to save crawl frequency settings. On clicking Set, you are taken to the Rules tab.
Known Issue
In Frequency Crawl, only the new videos are crawled. Any changes in the previously-crawled videos do not reflect in search results.
OAuth 2.0 Setup Pending
If you are an existing SearchUnify user and you migrate your instance to Q1 '21 or newer versions, your YouTube and Google Drive content sources will continue to work. However, you will see the following error on your YouTube and Google Drive content sources in case you haven't authenticated them with OAuth 2.0.
We recommend you set up OAuth 2.0 on your Google account and re-authenticate your content sources using the client ID and client secret.
Help Article - Google OAuth 2.0 Setup.