YouTube Algorithm – How Does It Work?
As a brand owner or a professional digital marketing content creator, you know that it is important that you are visible to your audience and ideal clients on every possible platform they would be on. And one of these platforms is YouTube. YouTube is a great place to connect with your audience and enhance their trust with your brand. Giving the exposure you and your brand need to reach a wider audience and attract them to what you offer. You have been on YouTube for quite some time, however, you realized that growing on YouTube is really hard. Trying to get more views and more subscribers is definitely not a piece of cake. You have been applying everything that so-called experts are telling you, yet your channel still isn’t thriving. You’re confused on where to focus on in order to achieve the results you desire. Well, the thing is, maybe you haven’t had a clear grasp of how the YouTube algorithm works and have no idea how you can take advantage of it. It’s important that you really understand the goals of the platform as this is going to help you create content that works with the algorithm instead of against it. That’s why in this blog article, we will discuss how does YouTube algorithm work, how they determine it, and how to get a lot more views and win more subscribers so that you can set your content and your channel up for success. How Does the YouTube Algorithm Work? It’s the million-dollar question that every brand owner and content creator on YouTube wants an answer to. YouTube is fairly transparent about the purpose of their algorithm and said that the algorithm has two simple goals: First, is to help each viewer find the videos they want to watch, and second, get viewers to keep watching more of what they like. YouTube algorithm is specifically designed to keep people on the platform watching videos as long as possible so YouTube can run ads and make money. It is really that simple. YouTube is analyzing over 80 billion different signals from viewers each day and then analyzing how videos like yours perform with different audiences. The YouTube algorithm is basically a real-time feedback loop that tailors videos to each viewer’s different interests. Their machine learning algorithms do its best to show the right video for the right viewer at the right time across the entire planet. How YouTube Determines the Algorithm? So, how do they show the right video for the right viewer at the right time across the entire planet? It’s through data. For each video, they look at things like titles, thumbnails, descriptions, and how other viewers seem to be enjoying it. But YouTube knows more than that. YouTube’s artificial intelligence begins to analyze your video at the time the upload process starts. So, while uploading, YouTube is gathering information about the video frame by frame and determining things like scene changes, objects, places, people, and even facial expressions. After your video has been uploaded and people start to watch it, YouTube analyzes viewer signals. So are people clicking on your videos? Are they watching all the way through? After they watch one video, do they watch another one of your videos? And then also how satisfied are they with the content? They look at how much of the video they are watching, whether they are clicking like or dislike, and how many people are commenting to a specific video. And for each unique viewer, they look at things what the person has watched in the past, how much time they spend watching and what they don’t watch, are they watching all the way through, and after they watch one video, do they watch another one of your videos, and see how satisfied are they with the content. How To Get a Lot of Views on YouTube? You might be asking, “How can I get the algorithm to like my video and get a lot of views then?” Well, YouTube systems have no opinion about what type of video you make and don’t favor any particular format. But if you ask, one thing we can say is that it’s easy and pretty simple. Get your audience to like your videos. That’s because the algorithm follows the audience. Rather than worrying about what the algorithm “likes” and “views”, it’s better to shift your focus on what your audience actually likes. If you do that and people watch, the algorithm will follow and recommend them to others. So which videos do they enjoy most? How often do they like to watch your channel? You can always check your YouTube Analytics to get to know the answer to these questions. If your videos promote engagement, make the viewer happy and keep them coming back on the platform, then they will support the goals of the YouTube algorithm. However, if you consistently try to persuade viewers to visit your website outside the platform, then you’re going against the algorithm’s goals. Thus, it’s really important to remember this. Try to keep users on YouTube for as long as you can if you want to give your channel the best chance to grow. YouTube has been optimized for clicks and views for several years. However, they discovered that it wasn’t the most reliable assessment of whether someone would truly enjoy the content or even stick around and watch the video for more than 30 seconds before leaving. Unintentionally, clickbait content was fostered by this. There were numerous deceptive titles and thumbnails with content that didn’t match what the viewer had anticipated. Regarding the recommendation of this kind of video, YouTube received numerous complaints. As a result, they enhanced the algorithm and gave watch time priority over views and clicks. Watch time is the amount of time viewers actually spend on your videos. Data on audience responsibility and satisfaction are also included on YouTube, for them to evaluate the quality of watch time. This is an effort to maximize viewers’ enjoyment on the platform. To