- In this video,
we're going to learn how to get more views on YouTube
from YouTube themselves.
Pretty simple, right?
(light music)
So YouTube just released some of the secrets
to the algorithm.
And that's what I want to talk about in this video.
Now, Harvard did this was
through two sources of information,
a fairly hefty blog
they published on their YouTube creator blog website,
and also through a video on the creator insider
YouTube channel
I'll link to both of those in the description,
just below the light button.
I would definitely say that the blog posts lean more towards
the viewer's perspective while a video is definitely for
the creators benefit
and having gone through both the blog posts
and the video in depth,
I would say that these are the three principle learnings
I've taken from them.
And I highly recommend you stick around until the end,
because that final point is by far the most important one,
even if you wish it wasn't and we'll start off
with something very simple.
The key behind the success of many platforms,
YouTube has been learning from its mistakes
for the last 15 years
and they kind of lay this out in a timeline
on the blog post.
As an example of one of the radical ways that YouTube
has changed over time,
it used to be the YouTube would just recommend
more of the same content.
If you enjoyed watching cooking videos,
then your homepage will be plastered with nothing
but cooking videos
and how frustrating would that be? (knife chopping)
Apparently quite a lot, because not many views came
from home browse suggested, those types of areas.
In truth in the early days,
most views on YouTube came from search
or from links outside of a platform,
but today of course, that is very, very different.
The view and experience comes from the viewer itself
and personalized information.
That's how YouTube was able to recommend the right content
to the right viewer.
Not necessarily for the creators benefit.
Now, of course, this all sounds very, very complicated.
Doesn't it? Almost as if YouTube relies on human psychology,
how can any algorithm achieve this?
Well, here's the thing.
And I've been saying this now for, oh, I'd say,
well over a year, at this point,
if you treat YouTube like an algorithm,
then YouTube is going to treat you the creator
almost as a program, perhaps even a hacker,
something intense on trying to break the system down
and find vulnerabilities and let's face it,
those two artificial systems are not going to work together,
it is much more organic, more human in nature.
YouTubers now collected trillions of pieces of information
over its existence to the point now where it can reliably
predict what I or you or they are going to watch more so
than I, you or they think they know what they want to watch.
YouTube themselves explain it like so:
"If you like tennis videos and our assistant notices
that others who like the same tennis videos also enjoy
jazz videos, you may be recommended jazz videos,
even if you've never watched a single one before."
Now, I'm going to be honest with you and say,
I find that a little far-fetched, but hey,
I don't watch tennis and jazz together,
but what I do watch together is tech and wrestling
and they're probably tens of thousands,
if not hundreds of thousands of more viewers
who have similar interests,
so when I watch a video about the iPhone 13 from MKBHD,
then it suggests a wrestling video
about summer slam 89 from Wrestling Bios.
Maybe a similar viewer to me watching similar videos
will get the same recommendations.
Now that's how YouTube would like the system to work
in a perfect world,
but what they understand is that not every viewer wants
to share all of their personalized information
and watching habits with the platform
and that is why they've built in controls to allow you
to say to YouTube how much you want to share with them.
If you limit your controls,
it might mean that you get
more of a vanilla viewing experience,
but hey, at least it keeps you on the platform
because you trust what YouTube is doing
or not doing with your data.
With the knowledge then that YouTube is always learning
from its mistakes this leads us onto important points.
Number two, that is that YouTube never stands still.
It is constantly evolving,
especially its recommendation system,
which means that videos that were successful for you
in the past might not necessarily be as successful
for you in the future.
Now, according to YouTube,
whether you believe this or not,
they collect 80 billion data signals every single day.
And I'm going to cover some of the ones
that you are familiar with,
but these of course are evolving over time as well.
The simple act of clicking on a video is a strong indication
that the viewer is going to find it satisfying.
I mean, after all, you wouldn't click on a video
if you didn't find the thumbnail and the title intriguing,
however, YouTube discovered, and this was over a decade ago,
that if clicks were not further validated in some way,
it would just lead to click baity titles and thumbnails.
So how do you go about validating whether or not
somebody clicking on a video was satisfied
by its actual contents? Watch time.
Now again, from a broad perspective,
watch time is a fairly obvious signal to use.
The more somebody watches a piece of content,
the more they're satisfied by it.
And it gives YouTube some very clear indicators
from a personalized viewer point of view.
So when YouTube switched their metrics
from clicks to watch time
in terms of a recommendation system, it works,
but at the same time, views dropped immediately by 20%
YouTube's response to this was that "We believed
that it was more important for us to deliver
more value to viewers."
Now, of all this makes logical sense, doesn't it?
Higher click through rate combined with longer
watch time would mean that the viewer is fairly satisfied
by the content and within the YouTube studio,
YouTube, even hints that these are the main signals
they are after.
However, this is where it gets a lot more complicated.
Five years ago,
YouTube started to assess watch time and they decided that
not all watch time should be created equal,
but how do you do that?
Well, YouTube said to themselves
that they didn't want viewers to regret
watching the contents that they were being sucked into
and from a creative point of view,
this is similar to the equation of which is more important,
raw watch time or average view duration.
Well, this is what one of YouTube's VP said in
that Creator Insider video.
- In general people tend to be more satisfied
when they watched more of the video.
- Did you hear the wording there? More of a video,
not more video in total,
but of course it's not quite as simple as that.
- There are instances where people are quite satisfied.
For instance, with entertainment videos,
that they've only watched a small portion of.
It really depends on which of the two videos the viewer
is most likely to find satisfying,
which basically means which one are they most likely
to give more stars to when we ask them later in a survey.
- [Rob] Yeah, viewer surveys,
let's talk about them a little bit.
Survey responses. First question.
Have you seen one and have you ever filled it out?
Let us know in the comments below.
I see them maybe once a month,
haven't seen one for ages needed to nick this one
off the internet.
I have never in my life completed a viewer survey
from YouTube. More on that later.
On this subject, YouTube say that
"to really make sure viewers are satisfied
with the content they are watching we measure
what we call valued watch time."
Now, if you do fill out one of these surveys,
YouTube will ask you why you rated it the way you did
and if you rate it four or five out of five stars,
then YouTube considers that valued watch time.
So folks, the next time you see a user survey on a video
from one of your favorite creators,
you will be doing them a huge favor
if you actually fill it out, but here's where things get,
and I must admit, a little algorithmic.
Of course not everyone fills out surveys
on every video they watched.
So based on the responses we do get,
we've trained a machine learning model
to predict potential survey responses
for everyone.
So what I assume that to mean is that if I don't fill out
the survey, YouTube does it on my behalf.
Freaky.
There are other engagement signals they use
on a lot more frequent basis,
shares, likes and dislikes.
And this will categorically answer the question
as to whether they matter.
And the answer is yes.
On average obviously people are more likely
to be satisfied by content that they like and share,
but here's where it gets a little freaky again.
Not all shares and likes are treated equal.
So if you like every single video that you watch
or there is a troll that systematically targets
a certain channel with dislikes,
then that engagement is not going to be weighted
that heavily on a video's performance.
I, myself very rarely like and share video content,
I only do it when it really moves and inspires me.
So I assume all of this to mean that my like or share
is valued more highly by YouTube recommendation system
than say a hundred of you who've automatically liked
this video within the first three seconds of watching it.
We appreciate it.
But does it really matter to the recommendation system?
It is clear that YouTube is not just collecting data signals
from videos, it's also collating a lot of data
from each personalized view.
And what do all of these personalized viewers add up to?
An audience. So what does that mean for small channels?
- [Cristos] The challenge of course,
is that with small channels we have less information
about who the audience is for that channel.
and so it's harder to find the viewers who are interested
in those videos.
- And so now, you know, why all of us,
YouTube educators preach channel focus.
However, absolutely nothing we've talked about
over the last 10 minutes means anything
if we don't consider point number three.
The YouTube recommendation system has a gatekeeper
that we must all follow as creators.
- After responsibility, the most important thing
for the recommendation system is satisfaction.
- YouTube have made decisions and evolved
that decision making over the last 15 years to determine
what type of content should be on the platform.
This is called responsibility
and YouTube's recommendation system
actually places this higher than viewer satisfaction.
Now it's obvious to say that porn isn't allowed on YouTube,
but what about all of these borderline topics
that YouTube constantly brushes up against?
For example, YouTube says that someone may report
that they are very satisfied by videos that claim
the earth is flat, but that doesn't mean we, as in YouTube,
wants to recommend this type of low quality content."
In that particular case, YouTube has decided to class
the value of a topic as low quality,
because they determined that as a conspiracy theory
or misinformation. Of course, you as an individual
have the right to your own opinions
and values on such a topic,
but YouTube have made their decision
and you as a user must decide to abide by that
or find another video platform,
and whether or not you agree with those decisions,
you have to be fair to YouTube in the sense
that they are being open and transparent
as far as we can tell.
when it comes to such content,
YouTube typically talks about two distinct buckets:
authoritative content or borderline content.
And they have been introducing classifiers
for over a decade now to analyze content
that may not be appropriate for the platform.
And when it finds borderline content,
which it doesn't necessarily remove from YouTube,
it's not going to help that content either
and it will actively demote it rather than promote it.
I think YouTube are actually very proud
of what they've been able to achieve here
as they state that "watch time is up significantly
from our authoritative new sources,
Whereas content that is deemed borderline is recommended
significantly under 1% of the time."
So what we have here is a platform overview
of a YouTube algorithm, which you need to start calling
the YouTube recommendation system.
But if you want to know how that recommendation system works
at an individual video level,
then check out the video over here.
This is my personal recommendation system
suggesting you do that. Bye!