Searching YouTube videos by coordinates

Youtube needs no introduction — everybody knows what it is. But for us, OSINT enthusiasts, it is much more than just a video platform. We can find really interesting stuff here with the right tools and methods.

As a rule, when users upload videos, they put the name that would represent the topic as fully as possible. However, users do not always put the shooting location in the name, so if you want to get the videos for a particular location, a plain search by video name won’t be very helpful. But hold on: maybe you saw that many videos contain geotags? That’s what will work out in your case, so we added a new search called YouTube videos by coordinates, and today we’ll tell you more about how it works.

First of all, open an investigation (a new or an existing one — doesn’t matter). Then open a GIS map. If you need a clean map, select File>>New GIS Map. Of course, you can use the map that already exists in your investigation, if you need to. Move the map by holding the right mouse button, zoom in and out with your scroll wheel.

Now it’s time to select the area on the map to find videos that were geotagged in this area. For this purpose, there are three buttons on the top left of the screen — for example, let’s pick a circle and draw it on the map:

Right-click on it, select Search YouTube videos and hit Run:

There’s no need to input latitude and longitude values — just find the place on the map! As a result, you get a detailed list of videos with geotags in this area. By default (i.e. if columns have not been reordered) left part of the table contains IDs, titles, descriptions, upload dates, tags and URLs:

Right part of the table includes number of views, likes and comments, as well as video preview images and channel info:

So come and pick the area of your interest on the map — we bet you’ll find a lot more than with just a search box!