Something is messing up in our Onebox flow here, I think to do with redirection/FinalDestination. If I use curl like so:
curl -L https://youtube.com/shorts/Cs3sTnLO6EE
I am able to find the title and other meta tags in the response:
curl -L https://youtube.com/shorts/Cs3sTnLO6EE | htmlq 'head > meta'
% Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 0
100 947221 0 947221 0 0 406174 0 --:--:-- 0:00:02 --:--:-- 504109
<meta content="IE=edge" http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible">
<meta content="ApvK67ociHgr2egd6c2ZjrfPuRs8BHcvSggogIOPQNH7GJ3cVlyJ1NOq/COCdj0+zxskqHt9HgLLETc8qqD+vwsAAABteyJvcmlnaW4iOiJodHRwczovL3lvdXR1YmUuY29tOjQ0MyIsImZlYXR1cmUiOiJQcml2YWN5U2FuZGJveEFkc0FQSXMiLCJleHBpcnkiOjE2OTUxNjc5OTksImlzU3ViZG9tYWluIjp0cnVlfQ==" http-equiv="origin-trial">
<meta content="rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.98)" name="theme-color">
<meta content="A Screencast Of LinkedIn Persona Verification Failure" name="title">
<meta content="For https://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/cases/73171318#:~:text=Thanks%20for%20contacting%20us%20about,to%20troubleshoot%20any%20additional%20causes." name="description">
...
curl -L https://youtube.com/shorts/Cs3sTnLO6EE | htmlq 'head > title'
% Total % Received % Xferd Average Speed Time Time Time Current
Dload Upload Total Spent Left Speed
0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 --:--:-- --:--:-- --:--:-- 0
100 992110 0 992110 0 0 445530 0 --:--:-- 0:00:02 --:--:-- 739941
<title>A Screencast Of LinkedIn Persona Verification Failure - YouTube</title>
However when I get the response via our oneboxer code, these are the only tags (except script + style ones) I get in the <head> :
uri = FinalDestination.new("https://youtube.com/shorts/Cs3sTnLO6EE", Oneboxer.get_final_destination_options("https://youtube.com/shorts/Cs3sTnLO6EE")).resolve
doc2 = Onebox::Helpers.fetch_response(uri)
Nokogiri.HTML(doc2).css("head").children.each do |headel|
next if headel.name == "script" || headel.name == "style"
puts headel.to_s
end; nil;
<meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=edge">
<meta http-equiv="origin-trial" content="ApvK67ociHgr2egd6c2ZjrfPuRs8BHcvSggogIOPQNH7GJ3cVlyJ1NOq/COCdj0+zxskqHt9HgLLETc8qqD+vwsAAABteyJvcmlnaW4iOiJodHRwczovL3lvdXR1YmUuY29tOjQ0MyIsImZlYXR1cmUiOiJQcml2YWN5U2FuZGJveEFkc0FQSXMiLCJleHBpcnkiOjE2OTUxNjc5OTksImlzU3ViZG9tYWluIjp0cnVlfQ==">
<link rel="shortcut icon" href="https://www.youtube.com/s/desktop/ace6261e/img/favicon.ico" type="image/x-icon">
<link rel="icon" href="https://www.youtube.com/s/desktop/ace6261e/img/favicon_32x32.png" sizes="32x32">
<link rel="icon" href="https://www.youtube.com/s/desktop/ace6261e/img/favicon_48x48.png" sizes="48x48">
<link rel="icon" href="https://www.youtube.com/s/desktop/ace6261e/img/favicon_96x96.png" sizes="96x96">
<link rel="icon" href="https://www.youtube.com/s/desktop/ace6261e/img/favicon_144x144.png" sizes="144x144">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="//fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Roboto:wght@300;400;500;700&family=YouTube+Sans:wght@300..900&display=swap" nonce="kFtYVVw9wWKkoPdOJkO9xQ">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="/s/player/65578ad1/www-player.css" nonce="kFtYVVw9wWKkoPdOJkO9xQ">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://www.youtube.com/s/desktop/ace6261e/cssbin/www-main-desktop-player-skeleton.css" nonce="kFtYVVw9wWKkoPdOJkO9xQ">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://www.youtube.com/s/desktop/ace6261e/cssbin/www-onepick.css" nonce="kFtYVVw9wWKkoPdOJkO9xQ">
<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://www.youtube.com/s/_/ytmainappweb/_/ss/k=ytmainappweb.kevlar_base.dsnGl9m3_bM.L.X.O/am=AAAgAAgk/d=0/rs=AGKMywEVyAGSU99VwQpoLFio5FrCvZ1WpA" nonce="kFtYVVw9wWKkoPdOJkO9xQ">
<meta name="theme-color" content="rgba(255, 255, 255, 0.98)">
<link rel="search" type="application/opensearchdescription+xml" href="https://www.youtube.com/opensearch?locale=en_US" title="YouTube">
<link rel="manifest" href="/manifest.webmanifest" crossorigin="use-credentials">
<link rel="canonical" href="undefined">
<link rel="alternate" media="handheld" href="https://m.youtube.com/shorts/Cs3sTnLO6EE">
<link rel="alternate" media="only screen and (max-width: 640px)" href="https://m.youtube.com/shorts/Cs3sTnLO6EE">
<title> - YouTube</title>
<meta name="title" content="">
<meta name="description" content="Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.">
<meta name="keywords" content="video, sharing, camera phone, video phone, free, upload">
<link rel="alternate" href="android-app://com.google.android.youtube/http/www.youtube.com/shorts/Cs3sTnLO6EE">
<link rel="alternate" href="ios-app://544007664/vnd.youtube/www.youtube.com/shorts/Cs3sTnLO6EE">
I thought maybe this ignore_redirects was causing it, but if I modify the FD options it made no difference:
I suspect YouTube is probably cutting down on scraping because they are having the same AI scraper problem as everyone else, but not sure what specifically is causing us to get the blank response (that looks like it gets meta/title tags populated via JS the same as if you visit in the browser).
This code here for youtube oneboxing is what is expecting the title + image tags to be populated:
Will keep investigating ![]()