Browsing the collection of user-uploaded videos on VK without being registered and having an account the platform is still possible. With the slight changes to both the VK website interface and the mobile app, which made the checkbox for searching for “unsafe videos” inaccessible, alternative video search methods without login are all the more sought after these days. Here is what you can do.
3 Video Search Methods That Should Still Work
As you’re interested in browsing through the extensive collection of videos posted by VK users and searching for particular videos that interest you without creating a VK account and logging in, I can safely assure you that it’s still quite possible – to a certain degree.
The first method is pretty straightforward, and it simply relies on the fact that the internal VK video search engine is available for all users, without having to login in onto the platform. The second method is the one which you’re most probably interested in, as it allows you to search for both regular and filtered “unsafe” age-restricted content, now after recent updates unsearchable from the internal VK search engine. The third method is pretty similar to the second one, simply utilizing third party search engine sites.
You can skip the first method and go straight to the second one if you’re interested in searching for content which is not visible using the native VK video search engine.
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Method #1 – Native VK Video Search Engine
This is pretty straightforward and you might already know it: the internal, native VK video search engine is accessible to all the users visiting the site, even the ones without an account. You can use it to search for video content, and browse through the VK video collection.
Mind that using this method, you won’t be able to find any videos that are deemed and marked as “unsafe” by the VK video search filter. This isn’t the case with the next two methods on the list, so let’s move forward.
Method #2 – Google Search Site/Intext Query Option
While this method for now is the only viable method of searching through VK video content including the filtered “unsafe” search results, it has some disadvantages.
First, Google does not index all of the videos on VK, so you won’t be able to find every single video containing your chosen keywords that way, and second, the Google search results do most of the time do not contain previews or sufficient summaries for you to be able to tell whether or not a given video is of interest to you.
To search for VK videos related to your chosen keywords using Google, you can use the following queries using advanced search operators:
- site:vk.com/video intext:words you want to search for – Using this query you can directly search the indexed video titles and descriptions.
- site:vk.com intext:words you want to search for – With this query you can do a broader search, not limited to the video pages themselves.
The “intext:” operator will show you all the VK Google-indexed pages that feature any of the words that you specify after it in the page body. You can also use the the “allintext:” operator to search for pages that include all of your specified words.
Yet another option is to use the “intitle:” and “allintitle:” operators, if you want to restrict your search to just to the page titles. Keep in mind that this way you may skip some results that feature your desired keyword in the page body, but not in the video/page title.
For now, this is the best available method of circumventing the native VK video search engine limitations, allowing you to search both for regular and “unsafe” age-restricted content on the platform.
Important Note: Some of the search operators shown here (namely the “site:” operator, and the base “intitle:” operator) will also work in a similar manner on Bing, as well as on all Bing search index based search engines such as DuckDuckGo. As the Google and Bing site indexes do differ, it’s often beneficial to try your search queries on both the search engines to uncover more results.
Method #3 – Third-Party Google-Based Search Engines
The third method is very similar to the previous one, as it simply involves using third party search engines such as videosearch.io to look for VK videos including your given search keywords. The search results on these can sometimes slightly differ from what you can find with your Google-fu custom search query magic, so it’s not entirely pointless to try them.
Still, truth be told, many of the other third party video search engine sites either mirror, or slightly modify search results pulled either from Google or from another search engines, and they often come and go, oftentimes being plastered with different kinds of unrelated ads. Therefore, I’m not really keen on linking other sites of this type here. Still, for now, videosearch.io does its job pretty well.
What About “Unsafe” Filtered Videos? – VK Search Changes
Well, the thing is with the recent VK safe search changes, searching for content deemed “unsafe” by the site, which is according to VK mainly adult content, has become pretty difficult for both the site users, and the spontaneous visitors.
The safe search filter button used to filter out the less savoury video content is gone from the VK user interface, and while no such videos have been removed from the platform, they are no longer searchable form both the native VK website and in-app search engine.
There used to be two extensions that brought back the search page switch allowing you to search through filtered content, one for Mozilla Firefox, and one for the Chrome browser, both developed by VK Next, however these have been proven to stop working since the latest changes on the platform.
As the disappearance of the safe search filter button is no longer just a frontend, interface change, and the filtering mechanism is no longer available on the server side, it really does seem that this feature is now gone for good, perhaps in.
Currently, the only viable way of searching for such videos on the site regardless of whether you have an account and are logged in or not, is utilizing the Google/Bing search methods as well as the third-party search engine search methods mentioned above.
Once you get to a page containing videos that you like, you can continue your search for content directly on VK by diving into similar suggested content, as well as user profiles of the people posting the clips.
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