YouTube Comment Keyword Search

Find words and phrases in YouTube comments and replies, and export the full matching entries for audience research, feedback analysis, brand monitoring, or finding specific questions.

Features

• Search all available comments and replies on one or more videos by default.
• Enter several words or phrases and match any term or all terms within the same comment.
• Search top-level comments, replies, or both. Matching replies are returned even when their parents do not match.
• Case-insensitive matching by default, with optional case-sensitive matching.
• Whole-word matching by default: cat does not match category. Turn it off for matches inside longer words.
• Match complete phrases, allowing differences in whitespace. Each result preserves the original full comment body.
• Choose Newest first or Top comments, and optionally filter by publication date or age.
• Export matching comments as JSON or CSV, with the matched terms, publication and update dates, likes, author name, video information, and thread relationships.
• Separate video summaries show comments checked, matches found, completion status, elapsed time, and warnings.

How to use

1. Add one or more video URLs.
2. Enter the words or phrases you want to find, one term per entry.
3. Choose Any term or All terms, and whether to search comments, replies, or both.
4. Start the run and export the matching results.

For example, search for bad quality, refund, and not working in Any term mode to find entries mentioning at least one of those phrases. In All terms mode, every entered term must appear in the same comment or reply; terms are never combined across different entries.

{
  "videos": [{"url": "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrmPDUvKyLs"}],
  "searchTerms": ["love", "favorite song"],
  "matchMode": "any",
  "searchIn": "both",
  "caseSensitive": false,
  "wholeWords": true,
  "sort": "newest"
}

Limits and completion

There is no comment scan limit by default. An optional maxCommentsToCheck for each video limits the combined number of top-level comments and replies checked. This is a scan limit, not a target number of matching results. For replies-only searches, parent comments are also checked to locate their replies, but only matching replies appear in the dataset.

The default processing timeout is 3,600 seconds per video. Very large comment sections may need more time. Saved matches survive interruptions. A timeout or incomplete extraction is reported as a partial scan; a no_matches result does not imply the entire section was checked unless scanCompleted is true. Optional limits are explicitly reported in the summary.

Literal text matching finds the words and phrases you enter. Synonyms, sentiment, and meaning-based matching are not inferred. Whole-word boundaries use Unicode word characters. Publication dates may be estimated when exact dates are unavailable, and that precision is included in each result.

Date filters use UTC calendar days: 1 day means today, and 2 days means yesterday plus today. Entering a date or age switches sorting to Newest first. With this filter, replies are searched within qualifying parent threads.

Output

Every dataset row contains the complete matching comment or reply, plus:

• matchedTerms, matchedTermCount, and matchMode.
• Comment ID and direct link, publication and update timestamps, and like count.
• Author display name and creator reply indicator when established.
• Reply indicator, parent ID, root thread ID, and relationship type.
• Video ID, URL, title, and owner channel ID.
• Collection timestamp, sort, and publication date precision.

Matching replies can reference a parent that is absent from the dataset because it did not match. Root comments include the available total reply count. The collected reply count is unavailable in this search output and remains null; per-video summaries report the number of replies checked and matched. Other unavailable values are also null.

Defaults

Setting	Default
Comments checked per video	All available
Search targets	Comments and replies
Match mode	Any term
Case-sensitive	Off
Whole words	On
Sorting	Newest first
Simultaneous videos	3
Processing timeout per video	3,600 seconds