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?
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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?
I don't know how much of it is specifically Google making their search engine worse vs the web being flooded with AI generated SEO trash that's intended to keep you on the page for a few minutes when all you need is a simple one word or one sentence answer.
It's definitely some mix of both though because I found getting concrete answers a lot simpler a decade or two ago just by using quotes around key phrases in conjunction with what seemed to be actual operator keywords like "OR". I personally don't think any of that behaves the same way these days, but I have no concrete proof of this so maybe I'm just imagining things.
Either way, I'm slowly coming to terms with the web portion of the internet being a lost cause as AI, bots, and bad actors infiltrate and abuse more and more of it.