(upbeat music)
- [Judah] So you're a YouTube creator
that started to post YouTube Shorts to your channel.
And luckily for you,
you're getting a good amount of use.
Maybe some of your top videos are Shorts.
Plus, new subscribers are discovering your channel
through the Shorts tab,
but there's one big problem. (music halts)
All of your success with Shorts,
don't seem to carry over to your long-form videos.
I mean, look at this. (somber music)
Does this happen to you?
While your YouTube Shorts
get a good amount of views and subscribers,
your long-form videos seem unaffected
by all the success happening around them.
What's going on?
Well, it turns out (upbeat music)
there was a change in YouTube's algorithm
that's causing this frustrating problem.
We've gotten confirmation from YouTube
that this is not only a problem that they know exists,
but it's a problem that they intentionally created.
Buckle up friends.
This is what's happening.
Since 2005, the data scientists at YouTube
have been working on perfecting algorithms
that can find and surface the best content for each user.
You watch video,
YouTube takes note of what you watched,
how long you watched it for,
along with hundreds of other data points that they use
to make decisions on what to recommend to you next.
This process is how most people find the content
that they watch on YouTube.
Around a billion hours of video
are watched on YouTube every single day.
And over 70% of that watch time comes from videos
that are recommended to users by the site's algorithms.
This system worked pretty well until
YouTube Shorts showed up.
Now, as this new style of content
began flooding the viewer watch history
that YouTube uses to make recommendations,
there was a big problem.
Todd is the director at YouTube
who manages the team responsible
for the algorithm that makes content recommendations.
In an interview at this year's VidCon,
Todd explained what went wrong.
- When we first launched Shorts,
one thing that happened with the algorithm in the long-form
is that a viewer would go and maybe they'd go into Shorts
and watch like 200 Short videos.
And then they'd go back outside of Shorts
to just kind of like the main YouTube,
and the algorithm actually wasn't used to seeing viewers
watching a bunch of Short videos
and then going back to watching long videos.
And so, when the algorithm saw a viewer,
"Oh look, the last 200 videos this viewer watched
were all under a minute.
This viewer is like, they only wanna watch Short videos."
And so it basically stopped recommending those viewers
long-form content in the main YouTube.
- Think about your own viewing habits for a second.
Your taste and preferences for long-form content
are likely different from the type of Shorts you enjoy.
And since YouTube's algorithm
couldn't make that distinction,
it made recommendations outside of YouTube Shorts
that were totally wrong.
People were angry.
So what did YouTube do to fix the problem?
- Viewers, you know, started complaining to us,
and that one of my jobs
is to listen to what viewers are saying.
And so what we did at that time was say, "Okay,
the algorithm doesn't know how to handle Shorts
and treat that the right way,
so we're gonna split-off the history for the viewers.
So when a viewer goes into - Interesting.
the main YouTube,
we're gonna not pay attention to what Shorts they watch
because we don't want the algorithm to get the wrong idea.
- If you're on the main YouTube,
YouTube will recommend more videos,
based on your long-form watch history.
If you're browsing in the YouTube Shorts tab,
they'll recommend Shorts
based on your short-form watch history.
This solution makes total sense,
but it also has one major downside.
- But what that means is since we did that
that there isn't much of a bridge from short to long-form.
So if a viewer does discover a channel in Shorts
and then goes back to long-form,
right now, the system doesn't actually know
that they discovered that channel
because we disconnected it.
- Argh, oh! (laughing infuriatedly)
What?
Oh my goodness. That's so stupid.
(sighing)
So if you're a hybrid creator,
meaning you post both YouTube Shorts
and long-form videos on your channel,
this solution sucks for you
because viewers who discover you from YouTube Shorts
are not more likely to be recommended your long-form videos.
In the eyes of the current YouTube algorithm,
there's no connection between them.
That's a bummer,
especially since Shorts don't count
toward the 4,000-hour watch time requirement
to monetize your channel.
It would be nice for more of those viewers
to see your long-form content.
Plus, if you are in the YouTube partner program,
those longer videos earn ad revenue.
A thing that, as of right now,
does not exist in the same way for Shorts.
Listen, I know it's not ideal.
It's not exactly what we want.
It makes sense for the viewer.
It kind of hurts as the creator.
How does this make you feel?
Upset, happy, confused?
Do you get it?
Are you okay with it?
Let me know in the comments below,
the like button.
But hey, YouTube's working on it.
- One of the things the team is working on right now
is building that bridge back in.
- Todd and his team are aware of the problem,
and they're actively developing a solution
that makes sense for both creators and viewers,
but the solution could take a while.
With over a billion and a half viewers on Shorts,
bridging that gap is no small feat.
Here's the thing.
You don't even need YouTube Shorts
to help your long-form videos get views.
In this next video,
we talk about three things you can do
to 10X the amount of views you're getting
on your YouTube videos without using Shorts.
Love you all.
Smash the like button and keep creatin'.