Analysis of trending videos

Crown

Crown

¯\_(ツ)_/¯
yta2-trfort.png


Ever wondered how and why some videos make it to the "trending tab" and others don't?


Thanks to data scientist Ammar Alyousfi, we now have a massive amount of data about every single video that hit the tab in 2019, as well as corresponding conclusions about what qualities these videos tend to share.

To compile his report, Alyousfi ran an automated script that scraped data from YouTube’s Trending tab every day throughout the year. According to YouTube, “Trending isn’t personalized and displays the same list of trending videos in each country to all users” — so he didn’t have to account for the possibility that different videos might show up for users in different regions.

Alyousfi found that over the course of 2019, YouTube’s Trending tab displayed 11,177 unique videos. If that sounds smaller than expected, it’s because Trending actually displayed 72,994 total entries, or around 200 videos per day, but a number of those videos trended for multiple days. For the purpose of his report, Alyousfi chose to examine data “on all of the 72,994 trending videos, not on unique trending videos only,” he said. “The reasoning behind this is that we are interested in videos considered trending by YouTube. So if a video is considered trending for 3 days, then we believe it has more trending power and more trending characteristics than a video trending for 1 day only; thus, it should have more weight. So we include the 3 occurrences of that video in the analysis.”

For the results of the analyis ---> https://ammar-alyousfi.com/2020/youtube-trending-videos-analysis-2019-us

Other Source mentioning this story: https://www.tubefilter.com/2020/07/10/what-makes-a-youtube-video-trending-2019-ammar-alyousfi/
 
That's really interesting! I read about half the article, but now need to go to bed lol...I'll finish the other half tomorrow! :)
But I have been watching A LOT of Bon Appetit videos (apparently they were on the trending tab for 300+ videos!? Holy Cow! :eek: ), so maybe the trending tab had something to do with recommendations algorithm (I never click on the trending tab....)??

Maybe I should add "2020" to some video titles! ^^
 
Crown said:
Some of them even have scripts that update the year for them automatically lol.
Click to expand...
omg that's hilarious! I can see them doing that tho -- pretty easy haha.... I have sometimes wondered why some sites don't have a date included for when a post is made, but maybe it's more of an attempt to try to keep things "timeless."
 
KatyAdelson said:
omg that's hilarious! I can see them doing that tho -- pretty easy haha.... I have sometimes wondered why some sites don't have a date included for when a post is made, but maybe it's more of an attempt to try to keep things "timeless."
Click to expand...

There are even plugins that will automatically "update" old posts so that the date in google always appears recent...^^
 
I mean, it's all but officially confirmed that YT manually curates the Trending tab and has preferential treatment for certain creators? Didn't Project Veritas do a video or few about it?

They probably have it half-automated though, algo does most of the work but then they manually insert some videos every now and then. Honestly, I don't even think it's a bad thing, Homepage offers some of the best personalized recommendations, so why not have Trending be a more editorially curated section of YT?

Also, do people even check Trending any more? I only check it when I read articles and watch videos about it, I never do it on my own.
 
Min/Max Munchking said:
I mean, it's all but officially confirmed that YT manually curates the Trending tab and has preferential treatment for certain creators? Didn't Project Veritas do a video or few about it?

They probably have it half-automated though, algo does most of the work but then they manually insert some videos every now and then. Honestly, I don't even think it's a bad thing, Homepage offers some of the best personalized recommendations, so why not have Trending be a more editorially curated section of YT?

Also, do people even check Trending any more? I only check it when I read articles and watch videos about it, I never do it on my own.
Click to expand...

I never check out trending. It's always full of crap I'm not interested in. I find the "recommended for you" section much better on the home page.
 
That was an interesting article, but very little of it was useful to a niche creator like me. I do use emojis in the title, but I try to make them relevant to the subject of my video, such as, if it is a camera review video, I will use this emoji: (camera) If is a fishing video, I use this one: (Fish) So on and so forth. I think putting the year in the video like 2020, is deceptive unless the video is related to 2020. It may go against the grain, but I try not to use obvious Click Bait titles because I get angry when people use those to draw me in, but they do not offer what they claim. I want to knock those people's teeth out, and I don't want people to feel that way about me.

It is not that I don't try to use catchy titles, but my content has to live up to them. For example, I recently was fishing on the bank of a river when water snakes started coming up to my feet. No matter how much I shushed them away they kept coming back. Turns out I had dropped a minnow on the ground and they were smelling it. So I began feeding them minnows and they sat at my feet like pet cats happy and content for hours. I pulled out my smartphone and shot a short video of it. Now how do you title a video like that? My first title was, " It was a normal day fishing when this happened!" Although this title was very accurate it felt too much like a cheesy click bait title, so I changed it to, "How to tame wild watersnakes and turn them into pets". Although the video is not really about taking the snakes home as pets, it does show how tame these water snakes became when I was feeding them. I mean, they were as comfortable sitting at my feet ad any house cat. Plus I got to use this cool emoji: snake

For me, it is all about the balance between becoming the kind of creator that I hate, which employs every low ball tactic to get views, while trying to successfully promote my videos in world where the top-performing don't have the same standards as me and will gladly sell their soul to Satan for views.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top