How the Youtube Algorithm works

almost 2 years ago (Edited)

Diving into how the youtube algorithm works and experimenting with it quite a bit these past few weeks, I'm starting to see just why most people don't grow there.

You have to please both peoples impulses to click and stay, and also the algorithms. It's a lot to balance.

The platform is almost entirely about the algorithm. There isn't much of a place for "community" to grow. Far more people watch without commenting, and those who comment direct their comments at the creator who usually doesn't care much about connecting with "fans".

Still, the algorithms are actually quite straightforward and easy to understand.

Youtube likes when people stay on a video...

so if people watch your video to the end, that is the best best best thing they can do to help you. If you watch to the end, not only will Youtube recommend you more from that creator, it will recommend that creator to other people as well.

Just because they see your video doesn't mean it's good for you though. If you don't catch people somehow and make them want to watch, they'll click something else. When someone sees your video and doesn't click it, that signals to youtube to show it to fewer people.

So if 5 or 6 people watch 30-100% of your video, youtube will show your video to 50-100 other people. If you can get 10-20% to click and watch a fair bit, it'll send it to a lot more peoples recommendation feeds, in the thousands.

There are other factors, such as time of day, how crowded that niche is, SEO, and thumbs up vs thumbs down, but...

Click rate and View time trump everything

So if you want to support someone, just subscribing and liking isn't enough. It's something, but if you really want to help them, you will let the video play until the end, or at least try to get through as much as you can.

Watching their video for 30 seconds and liking it actually hurts their chance of reaching more people

Watching on mute and watching multiple times a day (up to 3 or 4 times) counts according to some people.

This was one of the reasons I decided to try out videos that were cut down to the shortest time possible. I condensed 21 minutes of our podcast to 7 minutes and it works really well I think.

I'm surprised that I'm having fun with this, which is good cause if I wasn't then I wouldn't be doing it. The chances of getting big on youtube are pretty small. It requires a ton of work and being in the right place at the right time, plus working these algorithms and human psychology. I'm going to try and take a stab without doing anything that doesn't feel honest and fun for me.

I would appreciate if you check out my first short Untangled Knots podcast video and let me know what you think, but ONLY if you think you might be willing to watch the full thing :-D If you like it please subscribe :-)

The video is called "Millennials in 3 Countries Talk about High School"