What are YouTube's algorithms and how do you use them to generate search results?
Knowing how YouTube algorithms work is crucial to being able to grow your audience and attract more followers.
Fortunately, we can understand how YouTube's algorithms work. YouTube has released a research paper that provides an overview of the site's architecture and has launched training for content creators to better explore the YouTube platform.
In the following article, we'll help you understand how to boost your YouTube ranking and how to boost your YouTube presence.
How do YouTube's algorithms work?
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| youtube algorithms |
YouTube's algorithms play videos with the most relevant content in the title and help users find content that best matches their interests in five different sections of the YouTube platform: search, homepage, suggested clips, subscriptions and trending.
By helping users find videos that match their interests, YouTube can keep viewers on the platform as long as possible.
To find out which videos and channels users are likely to like to watch, YouTube tracks users, which means they track users' interaction with each video they watch, i.e., which videos the user watches, how much time they spend watching each video and whether they like the video or dislike it, which videos they leave comments on, and which ideas they search for.
YouTube's algorithms care more about how long a user spends watching a video than how many views and clicks are required. So content creators need to produce videos that the audience actually enjoys, motivating them to watch to the end.
What are the most important of these factors? And how does the algorithm decide how to present content to users in the search section, home page and suggestions?
search
The two main factors that affect the search ranking of your videos are keywords and their relevance to the video content.
When ranking videos in search, YouTube will take into account how well the titles, video descriptions and content match each user's search queries, how many videos the user has watched on your channel and the last time they watched a video on the same topic they are searching for.
Home page and video suggestions
The secret of YouTube's success lies in its focus on meeting users' needs, providing them with the most appropriate recommendations and personalizing subscribers.
To do this, YouTube analyzes users' activity history and finds hundreds of videos similar to what the user has already watched.The videos are then ranked by the user's interaction with each clip, number of views, number of times they search for the same topics, and number of subscriptions to channels with similar content.
YouTube notes that users tend to watch more content when they receive recommendations from a variety of channels, so recommendations are added to the home page or the next video list.
trending page
The trending page is the stream of new and popular videos in a particular country. YouTube strives to find a balance between popular videos and videos with topics of interest to the user when videos are ranked in this section, and the number of views and view growth rate for each video are taken into account.
Subscriptions
YouTube has a page dedicated to subscriptions, where all the most recently uploaded videos are displayed in the channels that each user subscribes to.
To determine the ratings in this section, YouTube uses a metric called "view speed", which measures the number of subscribers who watch a video right after it is posted. The faster the video is viewed, the higher the rating.
Read also: How does youtube send you money
How to optimize your videos to fit YouTube's algorithms
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To increase the ranking of your YouTube videos, you should first consider optimizing your videos and channel for common search queries. To do this, place keywords in the titles of the videos and add them to tags, descriptions, thumbnails and video files.
You should also look for the most common user queries that lead them to follow your videos, and you can find them in the Google search report.
In case the queries are slightly different from the topic of the video, consider updating the video and re-uploading it so that it is tailored to meet the subscribers' queries and add appropriate keywords to the video description. But if there is too much difference between the queries and the subject of the video, consider creating new videos around those queries.
It's important that you optimize your videos and your channel, in order to attract your subscribers' interest and get positive interactions, and one of the best ways to get users' attention is to create appropriate thumbnails for your videos.
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| youtube thumbnails |
The thumbnails that users see when they search are just as important as the video title, as it is the first glimpse of the video and is what entices the user to click and watch the video. The brain is also programmed to respond to visual stimuli.
After choosing the thumbnail, you need to think about how you can capture the viewer's interest in the first 10 seconds by talking about the video content or in an entertaining way.
And you can create playlists on a specific topic, starting with the videos that are the best in the eyes of your subscribers. This increases the likelihood that users will see most of the videos in your playlists.
It's important that you measure the performance of your videos using engagement metrics such as watch time, average audience, average watch time, and average session time. You should focus on the topics and videos that generate the most interaction and try to create content with those topics, so you can improve the ranking of your videos and channel in YouTube search results and on the YouTube recommendations page.
Some facts about how YouTube's algorithms work
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| YouTube's algorithms |
Videos are underperforming
Do underperforming videos have a negative impact on the channel's rating? And does the presence of such clips in the channel affect the ranking and rating of premium videos?
YouTube not only rates the entire channel based on the performance of specific videos, but is interested in how people react to or interact with a particular video.
In other words, YouTube's recommendation algorithms work based on how the audience interacts with the video. If the video appeals to the audience, it will appear in users' recommendations, regardless of the performance of the channel's previous videos.
It's normal for video performance to change in terms of viewership, audience interaction and other metrics. Therefore, YouTube evaluates each clip individually, regardless of the rest of the videos in the channel.
Number of uploads per day
There is no limit to the number of videos that can be recommended by YouTube in each channel, channels can upload many videos in a day without any problem, and the YouTube algorithm only cares about the number of views each video receives.
And if the channel is uploading a large number of videos and more than usual, but each video is getting progressively fewer views, it's evidence that the channel is losing subscribers.
While there is no limit to the number of videos a channel can upload, there is a limit to the number of notifications that can be sent. YouTube only allows 3 notifications per channel in 24 hours.
Inactive subscribers
If there are a large number of inactive subscribers on the channel, do I need to create a new channel and re-upload the videos to make them more acceptable to YouTube's algorithms?
If you have a large number of inactive users on your channel, your videos can succeed and appear in the recommendation section if they attract a large number of views.
Creating a new channel and re-uploading the same videos will not improve the appearance of the videos or their rating by the YouTube algorithm.
Content creators should only create a new channel if they decide to move into creating and publishing different content.
external traffic
How important is external traffic? External traffic is a factor that affects YouTube's recommendation algorithms. Showing the video in the recommendations section may be helpful, but in the future, the long-term success of the video depends on how people react and interact with the video?
It's common knowledge that more external traffic means more clicks, but users don't necessarily have to watch the entire video. Does more clicks with poor average rendering affect your video's performance?
According to YouTube, it's okay if the average viewing time decreases when the video receives a large number of external views. It has no effect on the long-term success of the video. The YouTube algorithm is concerned with viewer engagement and interaction with the video on YouTube and is not concerned with what viewers do after clicking on the video from an external website or app.
YouTube Search Results
How does YouTube rank search results? Just like Google, YouTube search has a similar goal as it wants to show users the most relevant search results for their query. Therefore, videos are ranked in YouTube searches based on various factors, the most important of which are relevance and performance.
Relevance means how well the title, description and content of a video match the user's query.
Performance is related to which videos users chose to watch after making similar queries.
YouTube's algorithm also takes into account engagement metrics such as the time it takes a viewer to watch a video.
In other words, YouTube search results display the most relevant videos that the user is most likely to watch.
Multiple languages on the same channel
Can uploading videos in two different languages on the same channel affect the work of the YouTube algorithm and increase the chances of the video being placed in the suggestion list?
Uploading in different languages on the same channel can be confusing for viewers, so YouTube recommends creating separate channels for each language.
But there are a few exceptions: if a channel caters to a multilingual audience, it makes sense to keep all content on the same channel.
The importance of viewing time
Does the YouTube algorithm recommend a video during certain hours?
Actually, there is no certain threshold of time that the video must reach before it starts to be published in the recommendations and suggestions section. Channels may notice that some videos gain more views months after they are published, as it is common for users to show more interest in older videos, and this may be because a particular topic is becoming more popular or there are new subscribers to the channel.
Most YouTube users do not watch videos in the order of the most recent videos, and most of them do not care when the video was published. As a result, each user's home page often contains videos posted weeks, months, or even years ago.
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