Any user can have a solid idea of what they did on the Web during the last few days, but extending that to a neighborhood or an entire city is much more complicated. In the specific case of YouTube, there is a way to find out through the Geo Search Tool, a portal that reports which videos uploaded to the service are closest to your current location.
Exploring Local Videos
Earlier this year we talked about Petit Tube, a small portal that helps us discover YouTube videos that no one has watched. The number of clips is gigantic, and honestly it is impossible to know everything that exists, but any additional parameter allows us to quickly filter content and find some truly strange works. Now, imagine for a moment that the main filter is not the number of views, but their approximate origin. That leads us to Geo Search Tool, a tool oriented towards "citizen journalism", and that serves as a model to explore the potential of YouTube and Google APIs when it comes to finding local news.
According to the official page, Geo Search Tool searches depend on the YouTube API, and the box transforms our string into latitude and longitude coordinates. The number of videos uploaded to YouTube with precise geolocation data is very low, so no one should expect too many hits when placing their address, but with a handful of extra keywords (for example, "robbery", "storm", "tornado", things like that), it is possible to expand or reduce the range. The site also suggests filtering by date if too many low-quality results appear.
My First Search
As for what people upload... cartoons, many gameplays, a repeated trailer here and there, religious songs, and even the preparation of a vegan omelette were part of my first search. Geo Search Tool shows the first 50 results by date, so it is very likely to find videos with no previous views. In summary: do you want to know what your neighbors are uploading to YouTube? Geo Search Tool is an excellent place to find out.
You can access the tool at its official site.
