Update: YouTube appear to have listened to users’ comments, and made a second update in a day – the search box now only displays when you hover over the video.

Here’s what it looks like:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Understandably, many people might want to remove this “feature” – so here’s how:
(The YouTube api has been updated to mention this, so it appears to be a supported method)

1. In your embed code, find the url for the flash player (it is in there twice if you are using the standard YouTube embed code)
2. Add the parameter showsearch=0 (by adding “&showsearch=0″ to the url)
3. There is no step three – the video shouldn’t be showing the search box any more.

The video should now look like this:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Code:

<object classid=”clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000″ width=”425″ height=”344″ codebase=”http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0″><param name=”allowFullScreen” value=”true” /><param name=”allowscriptaccess” value=”always” /><param name=”src” value=”http://www.youtube.com/v/4Cq4O_z5Blo&hl=en&fs=1&showsearch=0″ /><embed type=”application/x-shockwave-flash” width=”425″ height=”344″ src=”http://www.youtube.com/v/4Cq4O_z5Blo&hl=en&fs=1&showsearch=0″ allowscriptaccess=”always” allowfullscreen=”true”></embed></object>

I’m sure some people will find that useful when they look at their blogs today …

Tim W