Browse Feature vs. Suggested Videos

[PositivelyBrainwashed]

Based on my channels analytics and other more successful channels than mine, it seems "Browse Feature" and "Suggested Videos" is what drives the most traffic to their channel. But does anyone have any insight on how to improve on each source of traffic? I find overall I get twice as much from suggested videos but I'm curious why there are days where traffic from my suggested videos decrease compared to the day before, while at the same time traffic for my "browse feature" increased, and of course vice versa.

I know SEO is important for both sources of traffic, but I was just curious if anyone knows more about how the mechanics of each works. The amount of views I get daily, might simply be too low to form any true analysis.

 

[KiddieToysReview]

That's quite a jump in subs to 55,524 !! Perhaps a little (greysih) hat trick involved?

Now your qn. I talked about this in a few other posts. I am 98% certain that Yt levels channels. They allocate you traffic levels that they then allocate to various sources. I've had two videos that went tit-for-that swapping traffic, swapping countries. One went down, the other went up. Then reversed. The algo control traffic explicitly. There is very little randomness in it. There could not be. Otherwise a 10 sub channel will have 10M views one day, 56 views the next, and a 5M sub channel will have 50M/day, then 4500/day. It can't be. It's all controlled depending on your channel rank.

So I think what's happening is the algo is running your video through different parts of the site and testing their performance. You can think of it as it's trying to find where to place your vids for the best return. Think of first page browse and top 3 suggested spots as prime real estate. It will place videos there that generate the greatest income from advertisers.

 

[PositivelyBrainwashed]

That's quite a jump in subs to 55,524 !! Perhaps a little (greysih) hat trick involved?

Now your qn. I talked about this in a few other posts. I am 98% certain that Yt levels channels. They allocate you traffic levels that they then allocate to various sources. I've had two videos that went tit-for-that swapping traffic, swapping countries. One went down, the other went up. Then reversed. The algo control traffic explicitly. There is very little randomness in it. There could not be. Otherwise a 10 sub channel will have 10M views one day, 56 views the next, and a 5M sub channel will have 50M/day, then 4500/day. It can't be. It's all controlled depending on your channel rank.

So I think what's happening is the algo is running your video through different parts of the site and testing their performance. You can think of it as it's trying to find where to place your vids for the best return. Think of first page browse and top 3 suggested spots as prime real estate. It will place videos there that generate the greatest income from advertisers.

That 55k subs was a big typo It really does seem like there are certain brackets or ranks we're all put in and Youtube regulates how much to allocate to us. Every single upload I make, there's seems to be an increase in how much traffic I'm receiving from suggested. My second last video has only 3k views, but it got way more traffic from suggested than my 4th last video which has over 6k views.

I get a lot of external views from Reddit that puts a lot of ups and downs on my views. But if I isolate just my suggested and browse traffic, it's clear Youtube is promoting me more and more. So I guess what you're suggesting is that Youtube tries to regulate our browse/suggested total so we get the right amount of traffic depending on our rank.

But how do you think youtube decides what bracket to put you on? I'm sure there's tons of factors but do you think Youtube it's mostly based on how much overall watch time you produce in a given month?

 

[KiddieToysReview]

That 55k subs was a big typo It really does seem like there are certain brackets or ranks we're all put in and Youtube regulates how much to allocate to us. Every single upload I make, there's seems to be an increase in how much traffic I'm receiving from suggested. My second last video has only 3k views, but it got way more traffic from suggested than my 4th last video which has over 6k views.

I get a lot of external views from Reddit that puts a lot of ups and downs on my views. But if I isolate just my suggested and browse traffic, it's clear Youtube is promoting me more and more. So I guess what you're suggesting is that Youtube tries to regulate our browse/suggested total so we get the right amount of traffic depending on our rank.

But how do you think youtube decides what bracket to put you on? I'm sure there's tons of factors but do you think Youtube it's mostly based on how much overall watch time you produce in a given month?

Let's get the obvious out the way: watch time/video, /session, retention, all those other hard parameters.

Now the interesting stuff... Yt is in the business to make money from advertisers, pure and simple. It's a subsidiary of Google. What does Google want? Keeping it focused, Google wants to show on it's front page the most relevant results to search queries, and provide the most targeted advertising opportunities to advertisers. For Yt operations, Google wants Yt to show the most relevant videos to viewers, hence providing highly targeted Ad spaces and extracting the highest CPC from advertisers. That's the bottom line, literally and figuratively.

Google/Yt will promote channels that will maximize its revenue with advertisers.
Need proof? Focusing on the kids/toys area....

Check out the top 10 toys/kids channels. Compare them with toys/kids channels operating for 1+ year under 1000 subs.

Which one is Yt going to promote (suggested/recommended for you/home page/etc) to maximize advertising revenue?

Yt is a profit-center in one of the world's biggest monopoly enterprises operating in a free market economy. It's existence is to maximize returns for shareholders.

Think of those top 3 suggested spots in suggested on a big channel as prime NYC real-estate. Yt will not allocate a position there for a non-proven entity and risk loss of revenue. They may run a quick test, I'm sure they allocate a certain percentage for loss in the hope of discovering a hidden gem.

Bottom line, give Yt the videos it needs to maximize revenue with advertisers. The more you do that, the higher your rank compared to others in your vertical, and the more advertising dollars Yt can make (and of course share with you )

As simple and as hard as that.

 

[wasabiroots]

Just wanted to chime in and say, Hey that looks almost like how my first 8 months looked like.

But our traffic sources seems to be different:


P.S. I can't contribute much on the actual topic because I don't know. :S sorry and good luck.

 

[PictureFIT]

I feel that a test phase definitely exists, based on my own statistics and other creator's experience. However, triggering that test phase is unknown to me. I would guess it connects to the percentage of your subs returning and watching your new videos along with its own organic hits.

Right now, it seems that there is a lot of guessing based on each person's analytics, especially between some of the larger content creator channels. Some say that daily posting is beneficial to improving browse features. Some say daily posting can be detrimental due to saturation. Some say that you have to feed view velocity (which I mostly agree with), and some say it comes down strictly to SEO. Honestly, with so much confusion, your best bet is to simply continue making high-grasping videos and let the algorithm run its course. At least until someone can accurately dissect the data.

 

[Dave B]

I think all of the main points needed to answer the OP's question have been given already, but here's my two cents;

If you want to actively pursue an increase in "Browser Features" then it comes down to best practices for every video and for your channel as a whole. Derrel Eves covered it at VidCon this year, the video can be found on his page.

Both are calculated by the algorithm so your best bet is to try and stick to what we know about the algorithm thus far. I suggest searching for "Reverse Engineering the YouTube Algorithm" by Matt Gielen. It is a great read and has valuable insights.

However, with the supposed "algorithm changes" of late, it seems that both of these traffic sources have taken a step back and videos that have a higher chance of going viral are now being suggested all over the platform.

My advice, think of a clickbait-ish style title & thumbnail. They seem to perform well at the moment. But alas, a lot of it does come down to your rank.

Hope this helps.