Delete poor performing videos?

carlylespicks said:
So YouTube is all about retention right? Well, I think of that mostly on the video level but I'm now hearing that your entire channel possibly has a rank and a big part of that rank is your average retention.
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Audience retention is important for an individual video but for the channel, YouTube looks more at the over-all watch time of your channel.

I wouldn't recommend deleting an older video that bothers you but rather making it unlisted. Yes, your over-all view-count will drop because that video isn't live but if that video isn't performing or it bothers you, it wouldn't hurt to make it unlisted. The reason that I say to not delete the video is because if somebody happened to rip and re-upload your video, you would still have your (unlisted) video to file a copyright claim.

Don't be afraid to lose 300 views. Be happier and make it unlisted =)
 
Thanks for the tips. I think I'll do that. I'm curious to know how it will affect analytics data.

markkaz said:
Audience retention is important for an individual video but for the channel, YouTube looks more at the over-all watch time of your channel.

I wouldn't recommend deleting an older video that bothers you but rather making it unlisted. Yes, your over-all view-count will drop because that video isn't live but if that video isn't performing
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Wreckless Eating said:
YouTube SEO is not about retention (common myth). SEO is based on watch time, and in particular, per session watch time, which means that even if you get poor retention on a video, it can be rated highly if viewers stay on your channel and move onto other videos. Do not get rid of poor performing videos, as that will affect your watch time.
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As someone whose channel gets six-figure view counts per day, I'll second what Matt from @Wreckless Eating said, not that he needs me to back him up. He's never steered me wrong.

Here's a case in point:
Our "Overly Sensitive Zombie Girl" series is always going to be limited by its short view time. Most episodes are about a minute and that includes the end credits which I'm sure most people skip. No matter how much of a push we've given the Overly Sensitive Zombie Girl series, it can only go so far from an SEO standpoint because of its short running time. Our only views are from subs, not SEO. That's okay because it's more of a pet project of my daughter's that we do together as a creative outlet for her. From a purely business standpoint, it's not worth our time.

On the other hand we have our "Kid Candy Review" series that only started 75 days ago and it is just crushing! Each episode runs 10 minutes or more, and it only took us a few weeks to land two out of three of Google's top search results for when you search "candy review", as well as being the #1 video search result for the term "candy review". Our young audience watches the whole candy review so our average running time is very high.

So, as you can see I didn't have to remove my lower-performing videos for "Kid Candy Review" to take off. Those views are spit in the ocean compared to the bigger videos we have.
 
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