Some Insight Into Recommendations And Rankings

[SalvageSV]

I'm slowly moving through the YouTube Creator Academy and found this specific video pretty enlightening. It covers some detail on the algorithm YouTube uses to recommend videos. It relies pretty heavily on watch time, so that's an indicator we should all be spending time on. I know that my averages are in the 35% range and I'd like for them to be higher.

Here is the video:

And the full Creator Academy lesson is here: https://youtube.com/creatoracademy/page/lesson/subscriber-advantage?cid=bootcamp-foundations&hl=en

 

[SalvageSV]

An excerpt from the lesson in case you don't care to watch the full video:

"In the past, the number of views on a video drove its discovery and rank. Videos getting the most clicks were rewarded, rather than those that held the longest viewer attention. Now, YouTube looks at watch time - the actual amount of time people spend watching your videos - rather than only the number of views, as a more accurate gauge of how a video performs. Views only show the number of times a video was accessed, but not how much of the video was watched.

YouTube suggests videos in search and recommendations that are likely to increase how much overall time a viewer spends watching and uses watch time to improve the ranking of videos in search and recommendations. If people click on your videos and stick around to watch, your videos are more likely to appear more often in suggested and recommended videos and growth in new views could increase. If your videos drive more watch time or inspire your viewers to check out a related video (either yours or someone else’s) your channel gets an advantage!"​

 

[NS.YT]

I've been screaming watch time over subs since I signed up here lol. Beating and understand the algorithm is the key to getting known. Unless you are just lucky.

 

[lupin]

Which simply comes down to making good content.

 

[SalvageSV]

Which simply comes down to making good content.

For sure, but it also hits on the bait and switch thumbnails and such. They don't really help you.