Hello Insiders!
I have a special guest for you because we are going to be myth-busting today.
You've given us feedback that you like Todd coming on the channel
so we're just gonna keep bringing him back.
Would you like to reintroduce yourself?
Hey, I'm Todd.
I work on the home page and recommendations across YouTube
and try to give viewers what they want to watch.
Yeah, so today we're going to demystify two myths.
So the first one:
what is more important when it comes to search and discovery
the date/time when I upload a video or when I publish it?
Well, what matters the most in search and discovery
is how the audience reacts to it.
But in terms of like, knowing how old a video is
we're really paying attention to when it was published.
So when you upload it doesn't really matter but, yeah.
And what about—so this was an edge case—
if I take an unlisted video
and I put it in a playlist and then make it public after that.
Any weirdness around unlisted videos?
No, we don't know about when that happens until it gets published
like, our system doesn't even look at videos that are private
and I know there was a lot of people asking about this a while back
and I actually did some data analysis on it
where I looked at a whole bunch of channels
that had, you know, gaps between when they uploaded and published.
Yes.
And the channels that actually had those gaps didn't have fewer views.
They had the same number of views, more views
than channels that published at the same time as upload.
So there doesn't seem to be any effect of that confirmed in the data.
- Okay, so myth busted. - Busted!
Question number two, and this is something I have always wondered myself.
Tags: do they matter?
What should we put in them? What are they for? Are they still used?
Yeah, so we do look at tags a little bit but not as much as creators think we do.
Yes, OK.
So what matters the most to us is what matters the most to the audience
and what that is is the thumbnail and the title
That's what the viewers are using to decide
whether they're going to start watching a video
Yeah.
and then those people go on to watch
and hopefully you gave them a good idea what they were getting into
so they watch the whole thing.
So I would strongly encourage everybody to spend
99% of their metadata time on the thumbnail and title
maybe half a percent on that description.
Don't just post your social media links in there
because if you're trying to help us understand the video
that doesn't really help us.
Your Twitter link does not help you understand the content
No, it doesn't.
So what are tags used for?
So sometimes tags can be useful
if the content of your video, or your channel name, is commonly misspelled
and we haven't yet made that connection
based on people searching for that and finding your video.
So if you have some misspellings, throw them in your tags.
Otherwise, I wouldn't sweat it.
I think you're better spending your time on other things.
I like that.
So tags. Are they important? I think the myth is:
Yes.
- And so our myth is busted. - The myth is tags are the be-all, end-all.
- So yes, I'd say busted. - Busted!
- Thank you. - Thank you.
Two myths busted today, we'll see you in the next video.
- Why is the flash open? - Go, look at this thing.
- OK. - Alright, go.
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