We'll learn about two methods in this tutorial. Neither work perfectly, but they can be very result nonetheless.
Literal Date Search
The simplest method is to use the site: operator to narrow the results to youtube.com/watch, which is the base URL for all Youtube video pages. Then, we type the date as it appears on Youtube's website. For example, I see a video here of the 2008 Olympics, the date on the video page is written "Aug 8, 2008." If I search for this using the double quotes operator, Google should only show me video pages that contain this exact date. For example, if I search for this:
"Aug 8, 2008" site:youtube.com/watchI only get results that contain the date "Aug 8, 2008." The problem with this method is that while this date is written by Youtube automatically on every video page posted in this date, it can also be written manually by users on the video title or description and Google can't tell apart the date written by Youtube from the date written by users.
Of course, in most cases, the reason a user would write a date on the video is because the video was recorded on that specific date, even if it was posted on Youtube in a different date, so this is kind of useful in its own way. Make sure you try alternative ways to write dates as well if you want to find dates manually written by users, like "August" instead of "Aug," or day-month-year, or even year-month-day (ISO dates).
Date Metadata Search
Google has a pair of search operators, namely before: and after:, that can be used to restrict the dates of the results. These operators aren't necessarily accurate, they could be the date of the video, or they could be something else, like the date when the page was indexed by Google. But they may prove themselves useful if you want to find a video by a certain date. For example, if you search for:
olympics site:youtube.com/watch after:2007 before:2009Google will only show you videos dates from 2007 to 2009, which would potentially include videos about the 2008 Olympics.
This search operator uses a year-month-day format. For example, if you search for:
new year site:youtube.com/watch after:2024-02-09 before:2024-02-11You'll get results about the Chinese lunar new year, which occurred in 2024 in February (month 02), day 10.
Observation: Google also has a date picker that lets you do this if you click on Tools, but it's probably faster to just type the operator and the date in text code.
How to Search for Youtube Videos by Year
To search for a specific year, type after:YEAR-01-01 before:YEAR-12-31, and replace YEAR with the year you want to search. For example, to search for videos from 2010 about badgers:
badgers site:youtube.com/watch after:2008-01-01 before:2008-12-31Observation: I assume this is an inclusive interval, i.e. it will include first of January and 31st of December. I tested this with after:2008-01-01 before:2008-01-02, which returns return results for two different days.
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