How do you get your videos recommended by YouTube,
so they get pushed out to more people resulting in more views and subscribers? In this video,
you'll learn how YouTube Recommendation System works,
how to view and understand the traffic sources for recommended videos, tips and tricks to get
more of your videos recommended by YouTube and frequently ask questions about recommended videos.
Speaker 2: What is one thing you really wish that creators understood
about how the recommendation system works? Speaker 3: I think the most important thing to
keep in mind is that the recommendation system is for each viewer trying to help that viewer
find the videos that will be most satisfied to that viewer. The only way to do this on YouTube
with billions of videos is via personalization. Speaker 1: If you've been watching a lot of cat
videos recently on YouTube, you'll notice that YouTube serves more cat videos on the
YouTube homepage and in suggestive videos, which are the videos on the right side of
the watch pages. These are all recommended based upon your personal browsing behavior.
Speaker 3: You must keep in mind that everything about YouTube is personalized.
YouTube is a collection of millions of niches and even the largest channel on YouTube
has a very small audience relative to the overall size of YouTube. Only a fraction of a percent
of viewers on YouTube watch even the largest channels. Really it's about finding your
particular audience. [music]
Speaker 1: YouTube's recommendation system is constantly learning, evolving every day from
over 80 billion pieces of information they call signals. Similar in signals they consider are
clicks, watch time, survey responses, sharing, likes, dislikes, personal activity signals,
and contact signals. Where does YouTube recommend your YouTube videos? Your recommended
videos appear in browse features and suggested videos, which you can see in YouTube analytics.
Browse features refers to traffic that comes from the homepage, home screen, youtube.com,
or on the YouTube App. Suggested views come from suggestions appearing alongside other videos
or the videos that come up next. Keep in mind that recommendations drive the most traffic on YouTube,
even more than channel subscriptions or search. It makes sense to focus on recommendations if you
want to grow your channel fast. The videos that appear on the home screen are the most relevant,
personalized recommendations for each viewer. Speaker 4: In analytics specifically home is
also called browse. Browse as a verb, really means somebody looking through either a set
of information or in this case a set of videos without a specific intent about what they want.
That's actually very similar to how viewers behave on home when they arrive at that destination.
Maybe they come there and they're a casual viewer, they're not quite sure with what they want to
watch. I think that matches our recommendations on that surface too, where we have a really diverse
set of options. It's videos from your past watch history, it's videos from channels you
subscribe to, it's videos from new viewers, and videos that were popular with similar audiences.
Speaker 1: The recommended videos that you see on the home screen are going to be different than
somebody else's because they're personalized. It's also a great way for your videos to be discovered
by non-subscribers. When a viewer visits their home screen, YouTube will display videos from
their subscriptions, videos watched by similar viewers, and new videos. The two factors that
the selection of videos is based upon is one, performance and two, search and watch history.
Performance refers to how well the video has engaged and satisfied similar viewers. Search
and watch history refers to how often a viewer has watched a specific channel or topic. It
also refers to how often each video is shown to the viewer. Keep in mind that subscribers
watch more videos from subscriptions that come from the home screen than they do from their
subscriptions feed. Here are some tips on how to get your videos recommended on the home screen.
Number one, try to keep your viewers engaged for longer and keep them coming back to watch
more of your content. Whether it's a long video or several short ones, you want to
keep people watching longer, so YouTube will surface more of your content to other people.
Number two, keep doing what works. When you discover a video, that's getting a lot more
traffic than your previous videos make more of those types of videos because YouTube
will service more of videos that people like. If you click on the Reach tab and YouTube studio
for a specific video and notice a lot of traffic that's coming from browse and suggested that means
your video is being recommended by YouTube. Make a similar video and link it to that high-performing
video, so you get more recommended traffic. You can also click on the Engagement tab and YouTube
studio and study your audience retention graph. A spike in a graph refers to high engagement.
Whereas a dip in the graph means that people are leaving or losing interest in the video.
The solution is to improve the engagement on the next video you upload, so you get a longer
watch time and a higher probability that your video will be recommended by YouTube.
Suggested videos are personalized to the viewer based upon their prior activity
or what they may be interested in watching next. They're shown to viewers on the right
side of the watch page under up next below the video in the mobile App
and as a next video in autoplay. Here are some of the signals that trigger suggestive views.
Videos that viewers watch along with a current video or are topically related. These can be from
the same to channel or from different channels, videos from a viewer's past watch history,
so if they've watched a lot of cat videos, they'll be served more cat videos. Here are some tips to
get more suggested views from YouTube. Number one, develop a series of videos that are organically
connected to each other, so a viewer will binge-watch multiple videos in a row. Number two,
use playlists links, cards, and end screens to suggest the next video to watch.
Usually, I'll tell people what video or playlist to watch next and link to it in the end screen.
You can also add that video or playlist in the description and also pin it to the top
of your comments. Number three, double down on videos that are performing well on your channel.
If you notice a video, it's getting a lot of traffic in the first 24 to 48 hours, double
down that video by creating a similar video. Link the two videos together and a playlist, so
viewers can take a deeper dive into your content and be motivated to subscribe to your channel.
For example, if you click on the reach tab and YouTube analytics,
then under traffic sources, click see more. Now see all the suggested video topics that are
bringing in the most traffic to your channel. Make more videos based upon the suggested video topics
that are getting a lot of traffic. This will help more of your videos getting suggested traffic,
which is free promotion by YouTube. Speaker 2: How long does it take on
average for a video to be picked up by the recommendation algorithm?
Speaker 3: Ideally, it would happen immediately. However, it's not just about getting new
videos into the pool of recommendation candidates. The most important thing is also
trying to figure out which viewers would be interested in these videos. That's something
that's especially hard for new videos because we just don't have as much information about them.
Speaker 1: Design your video around people that are interested in your content. Think
about who's watching your channel and what they're interested in. If you're in it for the long-term
also think about how their interest will change over six months, a year, or two years in the
future. There's two things that you need to do for your channel to grow. Number one is
to attract new viewers and number two is to keep those viewers coming back to watch more of your
content. If you click on your audience tab and YouTube analytics, you'll see returning viewers
and new viewers. Ideally, you want your viewers returning to watch more of your content.
When you have a small channel, it's harder to get your videos recommended by YouTube
because they don't have enough data yet to recommend your videos to other people. The best
thing to do when you have a small channel is to focus on YouTube search so you can attract traffic
from people that are searching for particular search terms. If YouTube search is not working
for you, watch the a video on the screen right now on YouTube search not working and how to fix it.