Truveo launches a major update to its website that improves the performance and makes the site more useful to consumers. The new site is available at truveo.com; localized versions of the new Truveo experience are available in 16 other countries.

“Consumer interest in online video has exploded, and video is now one of the key drivers of audience and traffic growth on the Web, which increases the importance of a quality video search product,” said Kevin Conroy, Executive Vice President of AOL. “Truveo offers consumers in the U.S. and abroad the most advanced video search tool to find what they’re looking for, and as a result it’s seen dramatic global growth. The enhancements to Truveo.com only improve what is already the best video search experience.”

“A great video search experience comes from the combination of a great user interface and advanced technologies that return relevant results in a fraction of a second, while keeping up with videos that appear as fast as breaking news,” said Pete Kocks, President of Truveo and Vice President of AOL. “Ever since it was founded, Truveo has been recognized as having the leading video search technologies and interface. Today, with the launch of the new Truveo.com, we’ve put ourselves even further ahead.”

With the release of the new site, Truveo has made the following changes:

• Faster viewing of videos: The time it takes to start watching a video is greatly improved in the new website. Whether the video is available on another website or plays back embedded on the Truveo website, every effort has been made to decrease the time it takes to start watching the video through functions such as auto-play.
• Improved display of related videos: Every time a video is played on Truveo, a display of related videos is now prominently presented, making it easier for users to find other videos of interest.
• Expanded and easier video sharing: Truveo now prominently provides a URL and an embed code for every video. This embed code allows users to integrate a Truveo search widget on their blog or website.
• Simplified ratings: Users can now rank videos through a thumbs-up or a thumbs-down rating system.
• Cleaner look and feel: The look of the site has been brightened and simplified to let users more easily find videos, the search box and other elements.

In addition, all of the Truveo sites use the recently introduced localized ranking algorithms that vary the order of search results to deliver the most relevant results to each country’s Truveo users. For example, a search on Truveo’s France portal, fr.truveo.com, will be more likely to turn up French language videos from French media companies such as France24.