- The YouTube shorts algorithm.
It's new and offers amazing opportunities
for channel growth, and yet it's baffling and unpredictable.
Having said that, we think we finally cracked part
of its code, but in order to benefit,
you're gonna have to act fast.
Let me paint you a typical scenario.
I need the solution to a problem
and naturally I head to YouTube.
I type something into the search bar
and I get three videos, one, a five-minute video,
two an eight minute three second video
that is obviously stretched out long enough
just to allow mid-roll ads.
Quite annoying, right?
And then a relatively new option, a 40-second Short.
All of these videos resolve the same problem.
And so if you're in a rush and you just need
to fix your problem as quickly as possible, yeah,
that 40-second Short is quite compelling, isn't it?
And yes, the bigger revelation here
is YouTube Shorts now appear in YouTube search.
That's a powerful addition
to the second largest search engine in the world, allegedly.
Search-based content has been a foundation
of YouTube ever since Google got involved.
And people are always going to need to solve problems.
How do I grow my YouTube channel?
Where to travel on a budget?
How do I play the guitar?
And through this content,
there are countless education and how-to based channels
that have built business empires, solving viewers' problems.
But the problem is every creator already knows this,
which means that search-based content
is extremely competitive and often oversaturated.
But when YouTube suddenly introduces a new video format
to search-based content, that kind of acts
like a hard reset.
Over the last decade, creators haven't been making
vertical format search-based content
assuming it's gonna be discoverable on YouTube
but all of a sudden it is.
So there isn't much of it yet anyway.
Let me show you what's happening on our channel.
When I go into the Shorts video analytics
in the YouTube Studio and take a look
at traffic sources, over the last nine months,
we are seeing a near 500% increase in traffic
from YouTube search for our YouTube Shorts.
And even more incredibly, if we just look at the 2023 data,
YouTube search is our biggest traffic source
for YouTube Shorts.
And yet YouTube refuses to let us put custom thumbnails
on our Shorts to make them look attractive on a search page.
Unless you hack it like this.
I'm sure many of you are familiar with this type of graph,
the Shorts surge, where YouTube dumps thousands of views
onto a Short only for the views to dry up just as quickly.
Again, pretty annoying, right?
So what if instead you could get consistent evergreen views
over a 120-day period from a YouTube Short
via search traffic views?
Oh yeah, this is now possible.
And if you do start to get YouTube search traffic,
that can naturally lead
onto something else: external Google search traffic.
Yeah, I never thought I'd see the day when a YouTube Short
will get most of its views from Google search.
But there's the evidence, plain and simple.
So where am I going with all of this?
Well, put simply, if you are a search-based YouTube channel
that's had previous success, you can use YouTube Shorts
as a brand new launching pad and start all over again.
And let's not overcomplicate things here.
Go to the advanced mode of your analytics, set a time period
of the last 365 days, sort by traffic source
and then click on YouTube search.
Make YouTube Shorts with these search term queries
as the basis of your titles.
The chances are you already know
which of your long-form videos rank in YouTube search.
Well then, remake them as YouTube Shorts and then look
for search-based opportunities that haven't yet been served
for YouTube Shorts.
How to live stream on YouTube
has some successful long-form videos.
Let's fill the Short shelf up with some of our content.
This is all a little bit "Back to the Future."
Creators, once again, have a fresh opportunity
to dominate a search term on YouTube.
But that window of opportunity is very finite
because when other creators, especially those from TikTok,
realize the potential of search on YouTube,
they're gonna flood the platform.
So the time to act is now
if you wanna grow your channel
but not earn very much doing it.
While you may start to create evergreen views
on YouTube Shorts over a longer period of time,
I'm afraid that's not going to extend into evergreen income.
Yeah, that's YouTube Shorts for you.
So if you want to position yourself
at the front of the Shorts wave,
search-based content might be the solution for you.
However, when it comes to long form content,
I now have completely the opposite opinion.
YouTube search is dead and this is why.