What does unlisted mean on YouTube?
Okay, it's a pretty basic question.
You're going to learn the answer to that in this video.
But you're also going to learn the pros and cons of uploading a video as unlisted naturally
or going public or private.
You really want to understand the ins and outs of this so that you can get the best
results on your channel.
-So, I'm here with Nate today.
And obviously, I want to answer that really basic question of what does unlisted mean
on YouTube.
But I'm also curious to know like what's the purpose of that setting in and why you would
want to have a video unlisted on YouTube.
Is there a way to share those videos?
Is it possible for somebody to see a video that is unlisted?
And Nate chose this title.
So, Nate, why are we even talking about this?
-Well, yeah.
It's a wonderful setting.
I mean, you can have public videos, you can have unlisted, you can have private.
And the first thing to know is whenever you upload a video to YouTube, you don't want
to go to public right then.
That's actually going to hurt you.
If it does, so, you want it to go to unlisted or private.
They're pretty similar and I can explain the differences.
But the reason you want them to not go public in the beginning is there's a lot of things
you got to do to prepare your video so that it's ready to go live.
Once it goes live, your off to the races.
You've got to have a custom thumbnail in there.
You want to make sure your title is right.
You want to make sure that YouTube has had enough time to transcribe your video so that
it knows what your video is about and knows who the audience is.
You got to have your description ready.
So, those are some of the reasons why you don't want it to go public first.
-So, what are basic question here, but is the difference between unlisted and private
on the setting?
-So, private means you need to have login access to the channel to be able to view it
or that you've given someone else permission with the password that they can view it.
So, no one can view it unless they have permission.
Unlisted means anyone can view it if they have the link.
It's still not indexed.
So, if people go to your channel, and they search for it, they're not going to find it
if it's unlisted.
Those only show public video or if people do a search, it's not found in search.
It's not indexed.
So, both of them are not public but that's the difference.
-Yeah.
And the link of a YouTube video is 10, 12, 15 characters long and it's all random.
Like, there's no way that somebody is going to guess that and stumble upon them --an unlisted
video, right?
-Right.
But it is handy of there's a video that I don't mean for the public but I want to upload
to YouTube but I want to send it over to you, I could send it as unlisted.
I send you the link.
You could watch it without a password and that's just fine.
Sometimes there might be a video on your channel that's gone public but you look back at it
and you kind of embarrassed.
It's one of those videos from the past and that's like just take it to the unlisted.
Don't delete it.
Maybe just take it to unlisted so you still have a record of it.
That's another reason why unlist some of my videos for.
-So, you talked about having these docks in a row of the custom thumbnail ready to go
and having your description and those sort of things.
Is it possible to have your video unlisted and to schedule it to go public at a certain
time?
-Yeah.
It's a real nice setting built right into YouTube that when your video is private and
you have a specific date and time in mind that you want it to go public, you can set
that exact date and minute that you want it to go live.
And that becomes handy because if you want it to go live in the morning but you've got
plans that morning, you don't have to be sitting by your computer to be able to do that.
-And is there...
There are settings within the YouTube studio that will give you better information on when
it's best for your videos to go public, right?
-Yes.
So, in general, you can pretty much predict that wherever your audience is, when it's
morning for them, then have it go public that morning but then over time as you get more
and more data just like you said, you'll see what ranged of hours during the day you're
getting the most views.
And what days of the week.
So, a lot of my channels, we launch Mondays through Friday.
And that's what we find out as best.
Other channels, you find it...
Sundays are really good day.
And so even though we typically we don't work, we don't film on Sunday, my editors, my launch
team, they don't work on Sunday but we can...
On Friday, we can set it up, "Hey, have this video go live Sunday morning at 6 A.M."
-So, when following your strategy and filming 20 episodes at a time, are you able to...
You're able to upload a bunch to YouTube, right?
And then schedule amount in advance, right?
-It's a good point.
I kind of take that for granted.
Because you only want to launch 1 episode per day.
And if you're filming in bulk, editing in bulk and you go and upload 5 right now, you
want to make sure you upload it as private or unlisted so it's not ready yet.
The algorithm hasn't started to analyze any of it yet.
And then when you schedule it like we've talked about, you'll stager it.
You know, this one is Monday, this one is Tuesday, this one is Wednesday.
-You mentioned earlier that you want there to be enough time for YouTube to transcribe
the episodes.
So, what kind of timeframe do you want to have the video unlisted before you set it
to go public.
-It can vary.
And I don't know what makes the variable.
If it's the video itself.
But sometimes it can be as quick as like 30 minutes, an hour.
Sometimes it can take 12 or 24 hours.
When we film in bulk, we have a lot of videos.
We try and get videos uploaded to YouTube fully ready, complete several days in advance.
That way in most cases, the videos are transcribed.
And the reasons that's even important, the reason we're talking about the transcription,
why you want that to happen before the video goes public is that's way more important than
the keywords tag.
You can leave the keywords filled blank because YouTube ignore that now.
They've even admitted.
Yeah, it's pretty much useless.
YouTube knows what your video is about because it transcribes your video and all the words
that you say.
Those become the keywords for the video.
-Wow.
So, the keywords thing doesn't even matter.
Why did they keep it on there?
Do we know?
-Well, if a video goes live to the public and it hasn't been transcribed yet, then it
matters for those few moments.
-Oh, interesting.
So, you're covering a really basic topic today but you have a lot more information that goes
into some really, really valuable information about how to grow your YouTube channel.
Where would be best for people to go next?
-Well, actually I recommend another episode.
I'll try and link to it over here somewhere.
It's how to get 1,000 subscribers on YouTube in a single day.
In that episode, I really share my complete strategy.
So, if you're really looking to know how to get the best results on YouTube for lead generation
for your business, go watch that episode next.