They have infinite scroll for the YouTube search results but the irony is that the top search results are often not the ones you are looking for so you have to scroll somewhere to the middle to find useful results (or try different query or filters) and the bottom ones are something like related/similar videos from that topic.
YouTube's search is the worst. It's basically "here's 3 videos potentially related to what you're searching for and here's another 50 completely unrelated videos".
Search engines are an engineering problem. Tuning ranking and relevance to be “good” on a mass-market content site is an unholy black art.
The expectation is that results will accomplish numerous mutually contradictory goals, and be deeply personally relevant to a user who has used the search bar twice ever.
Expecting to see the original video by the creator when you search for the exact title of that video, verbatim, is not a self-nullifying mysterious goal.
Sure, but that’s a subset of what a search bar does. For YouTube, they are very likely getting queries like “funny cat,” “Taylor swift,” “prank,” etc. Those are not factual spearfishing queries, and ranking the results is a pitched battle between the people who want to drive general engagement, the people who want to promote specific categories, the people who are targeting demographic cohorts and want to push those results, the monetization people, etc etc.
YouTube takes thousands of data points and signals to rank search results and there are millions of videos to search and rank, it's quite hard problem to solve. Initially I wasn't a fan of vertical search engine/s but I think vertical video search engine for particular niche/s would be a good idea because YouTube is slacking.
I would assume the reason is money, barring some counter evidence. Some videos must lead to longer sessions with higher engagement on average. Even for a single view session some videos will have more ads and/or more profitable ads in them.
