What things build up channel authority? Overall stats and stats that are average across all the channel videos? What about total number of likes / dislikes?
That my friend is the Holy Grail of YT. It's going to be everything of the first order, and also their derivatives and where the channel fits in inside the overall ecosystem. Don't ask me what that means, I've only slept 2 hours.
Ok, here goes some ramblings:
It's everything tangible, so t/t/d/cc, likes, comments, sharing, etc, etc. Everything in analytics. YT can get an absolute ranking for each channel on every analytical aspect.
Then I think YT looks at acceleration. Speed of change. This is the key. Are you growing in views, subs, watch time. Are you standing still, or going backwards? Are you growing quicker or slower than other channels in your category? YT will bump up those channels growing the quickest (think of the stock market and investors piling into stocks rising the fastest). Ex: look at the EXPONENTIAL growth of Ryan ToysReview when there were already thousands of kids toys channels. Acceleration is the key! They hit popular topics (point below) and focussed their videos on those popular topics.
Then it's the whole ecosystem. YT states in their creator academy many times in different places you should make videos on keypole events, and do what's popular. That is right from the horse's mouth. So give them popular topics in your category, that's what they want. I have no doubt they rank channels based on how well they are hitting popular search terms, and then use the rate of change of data to determine who is growing the best, and who they should pick (algorithmically) to promote across the platform.
Thrown all the above into the mixer, set to speed 7 for a few minutes, and out pours a slurry of channel authority.
But like I said, I'm running on 2 hours sleep, so take that slurry with a grain of salt.
