Hulu Brings On Advanced Search
Posted 11/30/2009 at 4:18pm
| by J.R. Bookwalter

Hulu is following up last week’s plan to allow users to add tags to videos by improving the site’s search and discovery system.
NewTeeVee.com is reporting on the improvement to Hulu’s service with the new
Advanced Search. Users can now search by keywords or phrase, search within certain fields (such as Show Title, Video Title and Season) and even use common search operators, including “and,” “or” and “not” to find exactly what they’re looking for.
Advanced Search doesn’t stop there. Site visitors can now refine their results within certain networks, or even search only for videos with closed captioning, too. One popular option for parents includes a “family friendly” search option, which weeds out everything that’s not kiddie fare (meaning, nothing rated TV-14 or above for TV shows or PG-13 and above for movies, including unrated content).
Hulu editor Rebecca Harper explains that Advanced Search is a big part of the site’s ongoing improvements: “After all, we want Hulu to be a better place to not only watch videos, but also to find them, too.”
The new search tools come after Hulu’s best month ever in October, which generated a whopping 856 million video streams in one month. The record represents a 47% increase from the previous month, and the site is using its ongoing improvements such as Advanced Search as a way to maintain that lead in video streaming in the future.