For some reason I was back in Chrome today, and I searched Google, without meaning to, for:

get channel id for a youtube channel

Here’s what I got:


✨ AI Overview Learn more … To find a YouTube channel’s ID, you can: Use the YouTube account settings Sign in to YouTube, select your profile picture, then Settings, and then Advanced settings. You must be signed in as the channel’s primary owner to see this information.

That’s great, but I am not the channel’s primary owner, and surely the majority of the time the person seeking an answer to this question will not be, also.

Use the channel’s URL Click on the channel’s name under any of its videos, and then look at the URL of that page. The handle will appear at the end of the link, preceded by the @ sign.

?

That is not the channel ID.

Use the page source code View the page source code of any video from the channel, and look for the “channelid” keyword.

I felt a little stingy at this point, because this sounds like a real solution.

I opened the source for the channel page, and searched the source code for channelid, and found nothing.

Then, while typing this complaint, I noticed that I was supposed to do that from a random video’s page, so I opened one of the videos, did that, and found nothing.

A YouTube channel can have multiple URLs that direct viewers to the channel homepage. These URLs can look different, but they all point to the same channel.

Irrelevant information. How do I find the channel ID?

Generative AI is experimental. 👍 👎

Thanks Google! I know.

Sign in to YouTube. Settings . From the left menu, select Advanced settings. You’ll see your channel’s user and channel IDs.

Find your YouTube user & channel IDs - Google Help

Yes! I know. However, this isn’t my channel. I want to find someone else’s channel’s ID.

❓About featured snippets • 💬 Feedback

I have some doubts whether you would accept my feedback, if I decided to give it. Why is this here?

Learn what words mean as you search Select words to get definitions & translations without leaving the page (Got it)

Thanks! That’s really useful to know. Do you know how I can get a channel ID though?

People also ask

  • How do I get a YouTube Content ID?
  • Does YouTube have the ID channel?
  • How do I get my YouTube channel name?
  • How to find YouTube channel gmail id?

Fascinating!

Stack Overflow https://stackoverflow.com › questions › how-can-i-get-a… An easy answer is, your YouTube Channel ID is UC + {YOUR_ACCOUNT_ID}. To be sure of your YouTube Channel ID or your YouTube account ID, access the advanced … 23 answers Top answer: To obtain the channel id you can view the source code of the channel page and find … How can I get YouTube channel ID using channel name URL? Feb 7, 2023 Is there any way to get youtube channel ID … - Stack Overflow Sep 14, 2023 How to get a youtube channelid from the channels link … Jan 11, 2023 I can’t get channel id using YouTube Data API v3 Mar 25, 2023 More results from stackoverflow.com

I clicked on Stack Overflow, closed several popups. The top answer wasn’t useful. I did find a couple of answers down:

"To obtain the channel id you can view the source code of the channel page and find either data-channel-external-id=“UCjXfkj5iapKHJrhYfAF9ZGg” or “externalId”:“UCjXfkj5iapKHJrhYfAF9ZGg”.

UCjXfkj5iapKHJrhYfAF9ZGg will be the channel ID you are looking for.

I tried that, and it didn’t work.

Back to Google:

Comment Picker https://commentpicker.com › Tools › YouTube YouTube Channel ID Finder is a free tool to help you find a YouTube channel ID, along with other related channel information and statistics.

And it worked! I get 2 free channel ID queries per day. Fortunately I only needed the one. But it worked! It only took several minutes of scrolling past multiple screens of things that didn’t work.


Now let’s compare that to DDG.

Videos for get channel id for a youtube channel 1:28 How to Find YouTube Channel ID - 2024 263K views YouTube1yr

I skipped this as I didn’t want a video.

https://www.streamweasels.com › tools › youtube-channel-id-and-user-id-convertor YouTube Channel ID Finder - YouTube Username to ID Convertor Simply enter any YouTube username or handle below and click Convert Username to ID. This tools makes use of the YouTube API to make the conversion. You can check out our other API tools here. Select YouTube handle, username or legacy: YouTube handles are now considered the default for Y

And there we go! It works.


When did it get this bad?

  • Showroom7561@lemmy.ca
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    2 months ago

    When did it get this bad?

    Bad? Google just proved that they can get you to stay on their search page (or come back to get a different answer) for way longer than you need… this is a WIN for them.

    The enshittification of the internet + the greed inherent in these mega corps have caused websites to be designed to grab steal your attention for as long as possible. The longer they can keep you on their site, the more money/data/attention/time they can get out of you.

    If search was designed to benefit the user, a typical visit would result in maybe 5-10 seconds of someone’s time to enter a search and click on the relevant result. You proved that when you compared it to DDG 😀

    • LaLuzDelSol@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Yeah except OP already said they don’t use Google anymore, presumably because they got fed up with it. As the expression goes, pigs get fat and hogs get slaughtered. If Google has bogged down the web search experience so much that people are defecting then they’ve gone too far.

      • Showroom7561@lemmy.ca
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        2 months ago

        Believe me, Google does enough a/b testing, and has enough experience in psychological manipulation to know where “the line” is for most people.

        Sure, some will never use their product(s) again when pushed too far, but they don’t really need everyone to be using their products.

        Only the users they can profit from the most are of value. If a terrible UI, awful UX, or even a paid subscription doesn’t scare them away from using a Google Product, then each of those users becomes a cash cow.