California startup Truveo has launched a beta of its video search engine that seeks out content by analyzing visual characteristics of a web page rather than just crawling text, reports CNET. Truveo says its Visual Crawler technology produces more comprehensive video search results than competitors. The company has been crawling the web for video for about two months and claims to have indexed more content than its rivals. Truveo plans to make money from ads that run alongside search results and from licensing its search listings to other sites.
A test by CNET for "John Roberts" on Truveo located 274 results for the Supreme Court nominee. Yahoo uncovered 129 results. Google returned four results. blinkx.com video search turned up about 50 results.