- Ever since YouTube shorts were launched,
(graphics splash)
creators just like you have been complaining.
Why do I get loads of views on my shorts,
but hardly any views on my long-form videos?
Well, put simply, it's because YouTube intentionally
broke the algorithm, (glass shattering)
but now they've fixed it.
(audience cheering)
Hopefully.
Simple question, YouTube shorts, love them,
hate them, or simply don't care.
Let us know in the comments below and why.
The simple truth is that shorts are here to stay,
but since YouTube launched them, there have been
one or two teething problems with the algorithm.
- When, 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, it basically stopped
recommending those viewers long-form content.
- And because of this confusion with the viewer experience,
YouTube decided to use the sledgehammer approach
to temporarily fix the issue.
(hammer crashes)
- If the 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.
- But what does that actually mean?
Let me give you one example.
In another conversation this YouTube employee had,
he said that, "If 100 people watch one of your videos today,
up to 700 people will be shown new thumbnails and titles
of your videos next week.
Or to put it in the most simple terms,
one video view might result in seven impressions.
This is YouTube's DNA, and it generates
over 600 million recommendations every single day.
So for YouTube to basically cut off recommendations
from short-form content to long-form content,
it's a pretty drastic move.
And it likely explains why so many new successful short-form
creators have struggled to transition those viewers
from one type of viewing experience to another.
But this is a moment everything starts to change.
And it's all thanks once again to our friendly neighborhood
YouTube employee, Todd, who informs us that recommendations,
that's a YouTube algorithm, will now consider recent
long-form videos from channels the viewer watches in shorts.
In other words, if you get millions of views on your shorts,
and then you decide to make some long-form content,
you should expect YouTube to serve
some of those long-form videos up to the viewers
who have already enjoyed your shorts.
Whether those long-form videos satisfied a viewer
and YouTube shares more of your content with those viewers
is an entirely different question.
That, as usual, is down to you and the content you make.
So unless you hate YouTube shorts,
which I know a lot of you do, this is all good news, right?
And it brings up two big questions.
Firstly, now that YouTube has fixed the algorithm,
does that mean I as a creator
should start making YouTube shorts?
Well, according to the vidIQ community, astonishingly,
almost 3/4 of you are ready to give YouTube shorts a go.
And if so many of you are about to do this,
should you make those shorts on your main channel?
Well, here's my professional and legal advice.
I'm still not sure.
After hearing the news about these shorts algorithm changes,
we decided to post a short on the main vidIQ channel.
It's performed well versus our typical shorts performance
on the channel, although we're not getting that many views
from the Shorts feed and our next long-form content
tanked with a dreaded 10 of 10.
(dreadful music)
We've also been doing a lot of tests on our dedicated vidIQ
shorts channel, where as always our views tend to be
very spiky along with the infamous shorts surge graph
in views on several videos.
I'm still not sure if this is a good or a bad thing
for a YouTube short.
I suspect it's a bad thing.
And I have my own theories on that topic
and I'll save them for another day.
But this never happens to our shorts on the main channel,
which is really confusing.
I mean, some of our shorts refuse to identify themselves
as shorts and get all of their traffic from other sources.
(bell chimes)
The normal advice with this type of question, as backed up
by Mr. YouTube employee is, it depends on your audience.
If you think they will enjoy a blend of shorts
and long-form content, test away, otherwise save your shorts
for a new separate channel.
I think what I'm trying to say is that I've been talking
about YouTube shorts now for two years
and I still haven't figured them out,
but that doesn't mean I'm gonna stop talking about them.
Todd the YouTube employee talks about this
in a bit of a metaphorical way,
but what he's basically trying to say is that it's better
to be armed with this information as it puts you ahead
of a 99% of the creator community.
Yes, shorts are annoying for some viewers
and they are a little bit broken for creators.
And the amount of money you can earn from shorts
is embarrassingly pitiful.
But YouTube itself was like that a couple of years
after it was launched, with billions of YouTube shorts
now being watched every single day,
there is one word that can sum this all up, opportunity.
We've already seen Jake Feldman get 10 million subscribers
in 10 billion views.
And there are ever-increasing rumors
about a proper monetization platform on shorts.
Now it may be that shorts aren't right for your channel
in the same way that live streams
don't work on your channel.
But YouTube have now made a definitive decision.
Shorts are right for their video platform.
YouTube are gonna continue to improve shorts,
like the algorithm changes we've just talked about.
More and more creators are gonna capitalize on them,
which is why if you wanna know the absolute basics
on how to create a YouTube short,
you best watch this video over here.