This was designed to help average users understand ways to bypass or fix problems with large websites.

Youtube “sort by view count” fix

March 4th, 2008 Posted in YouTube

YouTube has made the unwise decission to remove the “sort by view count” feature. Luckily their is a way to work around this. Here is a quick example of how to do this.

The easiest way is to put in your search on YouTube and press enter. In the url of the results page you now have just add &search_sort=video_view_count. This will sort any result if you tag it at the end.

A big shout out to Israel who created a script on a webpage that automatically appends the url to a YouTube search. Check it out over here.

Here are some other methods. If you were to look for “sports bloopers” on youtube based on view count you would copy and paste the url from this:

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=search_videos&search_query=sports%20bloopers&search_sort=video_view_count&search_category=0&search=Search&v=

It’s important that you have a %20 between each word of your search:

Example: sports%20bloopers

If you were looking for Halo 3 videos sorted by view count you would copy and paste this url.

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_type=search_videos&search_query=sports%20bloopers&search_sort=video_view_count&search_category=0&search=Search&v=

You can also use this url in the following format.

http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=sports+bloopers&search_sort=video_view_count&page=1

If you are looking to search for just one word like “funny” use the following url format.
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=funny&search_sort=video_view_count&page=1

Any questions please comment?

Youtube sort by view count screwup

  1. 17 Responses to “Youtube “sort by view count” fix”

  2. By Jason on Mar 4, 2008

    Man thanks, I was wondering why this disappeared.

  3. By Ryan on Mar 5, 2008

    Thanks for this.

    Do you know why they did this?

    Also, what if you have a one word search.

  4. By Administrator on Mar 5, 2008

    Why they did this? They are trying to make YouTube a more personalized experience so everyone will see different videos based on what they enjoy and have watched in the past.

    Did they screw up? Yes

    I will post the way to search for “one word” in the blog post.

  5. By Israel on Mar 9, 2008

    How about just adding &search_sort=video_view_count at the end of the URL after a search. That seems to work.

  6. By Administrator on Mar 9, 2008

    You were rightr Israel,just do a search then tag

    &search_sort=video_view_count

    on the url results and push enter and you are good to go. This is the easiest fix.

  7. By MrSosa on Mar 10, 2008

    Will they change it back ??? cuz it really bugs me

  8. By cullen on Mar 12, 2008

    this sucks that was one of the best things ever f*#@ you youtube bring it back!

  9. By Jenn on Mar 13, 2008

    Thanks so much for this. I thought I was going crazy when I couldn’t find “View Count” as any of the parameters by which you could sort search results. One of the dumbest things youtube has done.

    Well thanks for the tip and also just confirming that I wasn’t blind :)

  10. By Adi on Mar 15, 2008

    Thanks.
    It is a very.. very stupid decision to remove that feature.

  11. By a on Mar 18, 2008

    Thanks for posting this

  12. By Israel on Mar 23, 2008

    I got tired of copying and pasting that string so I decided to write myself a simple page which automatically does it.

    Check it out here

    http://israelnyc.com/yt/

  13. By John on Mar 28, 2008

    Why the hell wouldn’t YouTube want to promote the most viewed videos?!?!!???!?

  14. By Arun on Mar 29, 2008

    Hi, No it isnt a copy of your post if you have read the entire post. I’m a frequent user of Youtube, and I discovered a way around the problem myself. However I found the URL solution from a forum.

  15. By Jüri on Apr 10, 2008

    Whoa. They put it back. Thank god they understood that it was idiodic decision to disable “sort by view count” option.

  16. By Mandy Lane on Oct 31, 2009

    Youtube is my favorite website and i am so addicted in watching music videos in it,,

  17. By Tristan on Feb 10, 2010

    They seem to have removed it again, but this work-around is still valid, so thanks for the info!

  18. By Philip on Apr 18, 2011

    Great work around thanks

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