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How does YouTube recommend Video? A Guide to Getting More Views

How does YouTube recommend Video? A Guide to Getting More Views

Are you looking to increase your Youtube video’s views? Or You must be wondering how does youtube recommend videos that you get all in your recommendations. Here I will tell you what’s new with the youtube algorithm and how to increase your views.

“According to the company’s CPO, Neal Mohan more than 70 % of the time spent on Youtube is spent watching what the algorithm recommends”. This proves the algorithm used by youtube is very effective at knowing what people want. He also says that the average mobile viewing sessions of the youtube viewers last about 60 minutes.

Actually, the content of the post, keywords you define there, metadata and tags, and what action you take to make the content of the video not only affects your video views rate but the whole youtube marketing strategy’s success.

Let’s dive into some history of the youtube algorithm how they used to recommend the videos, they improved and updated to make youtube deliver good and quality videos. How their frequent updates and changes have brought the Youtube this far being most popular these days.

History of the YouTube algorithm

Before 2012: view count

Up until 2012 youtube used to rank the videos based on view counts which were bad for the platform. With this tactic, they supposed to reward great content videos but instead, it made a clickbait problem. Many videos were seen clicked but the users stopped watching pretty fast. So, this strategy was bad for the platform as well as bad for the advertisers in the youtube.

2012-2016: view duration and session time

Now Youtube decided to favor watch time so-called view duration and session time. This also caused the issues that people started taking an unnecessary introduction before videos than to deliver actual content.

2016:Machine Learning

Now in 2016 youtube describes the role of deep neural networks and machine learning in its recommendation system.

youtube algorthim recommendations

But this wasn’t clear enough and made lots of criticism.
According to some research, the YouTube algorithm is on par with Facebook’s and Twitter in creating the filter bubbles that swayed the 2016 U.S. election.

2017: quality

Now in 2017 youtube improved the quality of news videos popping to reduce inflammatory religious content.

2018: monetization

And in early 2018 youtube monetization policy was changed due to which the content creators were reduced drastically.

2019: banning “borderline content”

In the early 2019 youtube announced the complete ban of borderline content that could harm or misinform the viewers.

This shows how effective those changes were and now what Youtube is. Now let’s get to the point how does the Youtube Algorithm work now.

How does YouTube algorithm work?

”The goals of YouTube’s search and discovery system are twofold: to help viewers find the videos they want to watch, and to maximize long-term viewer engagement and satisfaction.”

The algorithm affects the six different places your video can surface on YouTube:

  • In search results
  • In channel subscriptions
  • On the YouTube homepage
  • In notifications
  • In trending streams
  • On the recommended streams

The algorithm ranks search results that are focused on two primary factors.

  • It depends on how well your video’s metadata fits the user’s search query. Your metadata includes title, description, and keywords that you have used in your video.
  • How much your video has engaged users already like likes comments, watch time of your video.

This shows that search results are not the most viewed videos of the govern query.

How does YouTube determine the algorithm?

“According to YouTube, the following user behaviors are part of what guides the algorithm’s choices”:

  • What people watch or don’t watch ( impressions vs plays)
  • Depends on watch time, or retention i.e how much time people spend watching your video
  • Also depends on how quickly a video’s popularity snowballs, or doesn’t (view velocity, rate of growth)
  • Depends on the date of the vide created,i.e how new a video is (new videos may get extra attention in order to give them a chance to snowball)
  • Frequency and consistency matter. I.e how often a channel uploads a new video
  • Session time i.e how much time people spend on the platform
  • User Engagement( likes, dislikes, shares)
  • ‘not interested’ feedback (ouch)
  • We already said before that the algorithm is complicated, constantly changing, and in many ways unknown. The main thing to do is to follow the good practices with relevant good content to level up your channel for success.

Here are some of the tips that you can apply to improve organic reach on youtube;

Tips to improve organic reach on YouTube

  1. Use relevant and accurate keywords in your video title to optimize for search results according to search queries.
  2. Work backward from your search traffic sources to adjust your keywords
  3. Make the most of your description
  4. Transcribe your video
  5. Work backward from your search traffic sources to create new videos
  6. Translate your video
  7. Convince your viewers they should watch the whole video
  8. Create custom thumbnails
  9. Convince your viewers to subscribe to your channel
  10. And don’t trail off at the end
  11. Promote off-platform(social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, blogs, Linkedin)
  12. Make series, not one-offs
  13. Watch your analytics

Follow these simple steps yet very insightful ones to increase your viewers on youtube and make your youtube channel more popular. Don’t forget to comment down your views and about your youtube channels.

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About Author

Sumi

Sumi is the Content Manager of ICT BYTE. She is a tech enthusiast with lots of dreams and aspirations in life. She believes in the power of positive thinking for success and a happy life.

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