yes it does. algorithm works by a few factors such as engagement, and viewer retention.
the more likes, comments the more you rank higher and pop up on other youtubers page due to engagement. however, viewer retention is the main thing. if you can retain 60% of your audience retention, algorithm will tell YT this is a good video, lets rank it higher.
im not a big youtuber or anything, but done a bunch of search when I was a gaming channel. Now i dont care too much about it, just doing it for fun. However, on my other YT channel, one of my other videos have over 100k+ views and its ranked extremely high because almost everyone watches the entire video