Squeal Cat
I Love YTtalk
Really good question; since I'm not able to get those auto-tags anymore. I've been thinking what is going on...
Yeah, I keep hearing that metadata defines what you rank for, but not how high.
So what does this mean. Obviously you rank for the words in the title, and maybe YouTube defines their importance by what is repeated in the description?
However you can also rank for words that are in the description but not in the title! For instance, one of my videos ranks for "finebros sketch" (and all variations with "the" or spaces in between) which is ridiculous: The word "finebros" only appears at the very bottom of my description as a credit and not even together with the word "sketch"!
Dont Wake The Insomniac
Active Member
This is actually very interesting although if everyone was doing it, they'd be getting annoyed if they couldn't find videos in their own language as easily lol.
I wonder if some countries consume more English language media than others - like if Korea and Germany watch more than Japan or France. It's worth experimenting with....
Munchito696
I Love YTtalk
I experimented with foreign tags. For traffic sources/YouTube search, no foreign search terms are in the top 25.This is actually very interesting although if everyone was doing it, they'd be getting annoyed if they couldn't find videos in their own language as easily lol.
I wonder if some countries consume more English language media than others - like if Korea and Germany watch more than Japan or France. It's worth experimenting with....
Redford1900
I Love YTtalk
I'm experimenting this week. I have my video done two days early so I'm going to do all the SEO research I can with my new TubeBuddy account (free version) and my extra time. I already looked up some Spanish translations that look promising. I hardly get any views from search so I'm hoping this will work.
Becky Keegan
The Nerd Of YTtalk
Tags are an essential part to play in the promotion of our videos, if they were removed or deemed not as relevant as they used to be, this would surely spell disaster to the people trying to get into the search rankings. YouTube needs to stop putting us in the dark about these types of things.
TheKirkyLife
The Real James T. Kirk
For me I can easily see why Titles and Descriptions are most important. Tags just help that final amount.
JesusGreen
Posting Mad!
In the past, the way it used to work best was by spamming tags, in both the tags and the description. Now I believe they just look for the search term in: Title, Tags, Description, AND the Captions. Meaning you don't necessarily need overlap. You can rank for things that aren't in your title/tags/description if they're in your video captions, you can rank for your title without the appropriate tags, etc.
Basically for the best ranking you want to fully utilise title, description, tags, AND captions, but you can get by with just 1 or 2 of those 4 now and be fine.
In my opinion captions are the most underrated of the bunch. I did an experiment where I captioned a video and searched for random phrases I said in it (normal every day sentences, nothing to do with the video title, description, tags, etc) - and my videos showed up right at the top of search every time. In fact if I search for the phrase I introduce my videos with, a bunch of my videos all show at the top - but only the captioned ones.
Captioning is even more useful for me because when I'm trying to specifically tag/title/describe my video I'm trying to get very in my head about how *I* search for things, but when I'm talking freely (no script) in the video, often the terms I use *there* actually are things that other people are searching for that I didn't think of.
Basically for the best ranking you want to fully utilise title, description, tags, AND captions, but you can get by with just 1 or 2 of those 4 now and be fine.
In my opinion captions are the most underrated of the bunch. I did an experiment where I captioned a video and searched for random phrases I said in it (normal every day sentences, nothing to do with the video title, description, tags, etc) - and my videos showed up right at the top of search every time. In fact if I search for the phrase I introduce my videos with, a bunch of my videos all show at the top - but only the captioned ones.
Captioning is even more useful for me because when I'm trying to specifically tag/title/describe my video I'm trying to get very in my head about how *I* search for things, but when I'm talking freely (no script) in the video, often the terms I use *there* actually are things that other people are searching for that I didn't think of.
KiddieToysReview
I Love YTtalk
By captions do you mean the CC (closed captions) or is it something else?
I would hate to be a mime and try to caption the video!
What about all the surprise egg opening videos that just have hands and music with no words ever spoken ~ some of those get tens of millions of views!
But like you say, every little bit help. 4 points to address is the wisest option.
JesusGreen
Posting Mad!
Yep the closed captions. Well I think you can just as easily achieve the same by writing a long description, but if you can do both that's even more text that YouTube have to decide what terms to show your video for.
I do wonder if there are any specific terms as to what captions are allowed to contain - I know blatantly trying to fill them with new tags and stuff would obviously be against the terms, but what if you did have a silent video and added an optional CC commentary - kinda like when you get the director's commentary or something on a DVD? If the latter was allowed that'd be a nice way to make it easier to find some of the quieter videos - plus it'd also make for some cool ideas, I'd love it if like I was watching someone's home made film and one of their CC track options was a "Behind the scenes" where they explain each shot.
I do wonder if there are any specific terms as to what captions are allowed to contain - I know blatantly trying to fill them with new tags and stuff would obviously be against the terms, but what if you did have a silent video and added an optional CC commentary - kinda like when you get the director's commentary or something on a DVD? If the latter was allowed that'd be a nice way to make it easier to find some of the quieter videos - plus it'd also make for some cool ideas, I'd love it if like I was watching someone's home made film and one of their CC track options was a "Behind the scenes" where they explain each shot.