Searching for the right video online has generally been a pain in the butt. Because sites like YouTube index their videos based on the metadata tags, it’s easy to game the search results by adding misleading tags.

Thankfully there a search engine dedicated to searching video that’s trying to change that. VideoSurf claims it has “taught computers to ‘see’ inside videos to find content in a fast, efficient, and scalable way. Basing its search on visual identification, rather than text only… [it] provides more relevant results and a better experience to let users find and discover the videos they really want to watch.”

VideoSearch search content from about 60 sources like YouTube, Hulu, and MSN Video. Instead of displaying them with a single, frozen screenshot, is shows 10 clips from the video which gives you a better idea of its content and whether it’s worth watching.

So how does it stack up with the searches on other video sites?

I typed in the name of my favorite television show, LOST, to see what it came up with.  All 15 videos on the first page were promos or clips from the show. Compare that you YouTube where approximately two-thirds of the results were relevant while the other third weren’t related at all to what I was looking for. On MSN Video, only one-third of the results on the first page were relevant.

VideoSurf is still in its infancy so the jury’s still out on whether or not VideoSurf or another video search engine will succeed. However, as more and more B2B and B2C companies are using video to get their message to their audience, sites like VideoSurf could be a boon for advertisers and organizations looking to tell their story visually rather than through the written word alone.

In fact, I can see the future of search engines could be one that not only pulls up relevant web pages but relevant videos and displays the content in an easy-to-read fashion side by side. Don’t be surprised if at some point Google buys VideoSurf’s code and ends up making its popular search engine, even more powerful and popular.