New Thumbnails and Views Go Down

[Idec Sdawkminn]

I recently decided that one of the things my channel was doing poorly in was thumbnail appearance. That was the part of my channel I put the least effort into. After updating them, I looked forward to the increase in views this would create, but instead the chart is going downhill, starting from when I started changing the thumbnails. I'm hoping that it is a temporary effect of the change and that things will bounce back even better than before. Either that or it's a coincidence and my views were already going to drop during this time.

But that brings up the question, does any change to the majority of your videos affect their ranking in the algorithm? Is this a normal thing to happen for any widespread change, even if the change is an improvement overall? Or does this mean that my new thumbnails are actually less attractive and will always generate fewer views? I know time will tell, but I'm curious if this is a known and common occurrence.

 

[KiddieToysReview]

I recently decided that one of the things my channel was doing poorly in was thumbnail appearance. That was the part of my channel I put the least effort into. After updating them, I looked forward to the increase in views this would create, but instead the chart is going downhill, starting from when I started changing the thumbnails. I'm hoping that it is a temporary effect of the change and that things will bounce back even better than before. Either that or it's a coincidence and my views were already going to drop during this time.

But that brings up the question, does any change to the majority of your videos affect their ranking in the algorithm? Is this a normal thing to happen for any widespread change, even if the change is an improvement overall? Or does this mean that my new thumbnails are actually less attractive and will always generate fewer views? I know time will tell, but I'm curious if this is a known and common occurrence.

Are you talking about quantitative changes, like titles, tags, descriptions, captions; or qualitative things like banners, thumbnail deigns, logos, color schemes, taglines, etc?
The algorithm is not directly affected by qualitative factors. It has no idea if your thumbnails or your channel art is pretty. This will only affect viewer behavior, which the algorithm can then detect. So qualitative factors affect it indirectly.
But if the only thing you changed in a few days' period is the thumbnails, and the views dropped dramatically, then it does appear that viewers are not clicking as often as before. You can always change a handful back and see if traffic picks up, that's probably the quickest way to find out.

 

[Idec Sdawkminn]

Are you talking about quantitative changes, like titles, tags, descriptions, captions; or qualitative things like banners, thumbnail deigns, logos, color schemes, taglines, etc?
The algorithm is not directly affected by qualitative factors. It has no idea if your thumbnails or your channel art is pretty. This will only affect viewer behavior, which the algorithm can then detect. So qualitative factors affect it indirectly.
But if the only thing you changed in a few days' period is the thumbnails, and the views dropped dramatically, then it does appear that viewers are not clicking as often as before. You can always change a handful back and see if traffic picks up, that's probably the quickest way to find out.

I see. Obviously the algorithm can't judge my thumbnail quality. I was just wondering if the act of changing it would make it reset anything in the algorithm.

I was thinking about it and around the time this started, 2 other things happened. One of my videos that got around 10,000 views a month got taken down a few days before I started changing the thumbnails. Also, while doing my thumbnails, I noticed I had an old video that I had since replaced with an HD version of it and forgot about removing the old one. Both videos get around 2,000 a month, but I didn't want to have duplicates. So that would explain a sudden drop. But it doesn't explain why the views are less each day. I'd think the day after these happened the views would be much less, but the ones after would remain level. I'll try to look at the charts and figure out when exactly these events happened.[DOUBLEPOST=1468519035,1468515197][/DOUBLEPOST]Here's what I found out. The part I indicate for thumbnails is when I started doing them. I continued doing them past the end of this graph and I'm still not done with all of them.

 

[KiddieToysReview]

To me that looks like one of your videos was in suggested of another popular channel and got taken out or dropped in placement. It could be as a result of a periodic resuhuffle of the suggested videos, or the video was not performing as expected.
Why was the other video taken down? Was that YT taking it down because of copyright? I'm not sure how that would affect the channel if that's what caused it.
Also is this traffic pattern across all your videos, or just some. If it's across some, place the full title in " " into the search bar and have a look at where they are appearing in suggested that might give some insights.

 

[Idec Sdawkminn]

To me that looks like one of your videos was in suggested of another popular channel and got taken out or dropped in placement. It could be as a result of a periodic resuhuffle of the suggested videos, or the video was not performing as expected.
Why was the other video taken down? Was that YT taking it down because of copyright? I'm not sure how that would affect the channel if that's what caused it.
Also is this traffic pattern across all your videos, or just some. If it's across some, place the full title in " " into the search bar and have a look at where they are appearing in suggested that might give some insights.

Very interesting suggestion, seeing which videos it affected. It seems to be limited to my "Frozen" videos. They all have the pattern of suddenly going down during that time. All my other videos don't follow that pattern at all. When I look at the Traffic Sources for those videos, it is only the Suggested Videos graph that follows the pattern. When I expand Traffic Sources, the ones that have the pattern are my other "Frozen" videos. So either my own videos aren't showing up as Suggested to my other ones anymore, or people aren't clicking on them because of the new thumbnails. I just looked using a different browser that doesn't have me signed in and my videos still seem to be there. But it can't be that my thumbnails drive less traffic than before. For these ones all I did was add the title on it.

The video was indeed taken down due to copyright and I have 1 strike (expires on my birthday, lol). I didn't think that having your account be in bad standing would affect your video ranking, but maybe it does.

 

[KiddieToysReview]

Very interesting suggestion, seeing which videos it affected. It seems to be limited to my "Frozen" videos. They all have the pattern of suddenly going down during that time. All my other videos don't follow that pattern at all. When I look at the Traffic Sources for those videos, it is only the Suggested Videos graph that follows the pattern. When I expand Traffic Sources, the ones that have the pattern are my other "Frozen" videos. So either my own videos aren't showing up as Suggested to my other ones anymore, or people aren't clicking on them because of the new thumbnails. I just looked using a different browser that doesn't have me signed in and my videos still seem to be there. But it can't be that my thumbnails drive less traffic than before. For these ones all I did was add the title on it.

The video was indeed taken down due to copyright and I have 1 strike (expires on my birthday, lol). I didn't think that having your account be in bad standing would affect your video ranking, but maybe it does.

Ok so prhaps one of the following is happening:

- Disney Frozen (don't we all love that movie!!) has had some competition over the summer: Finding Dory, BFG, TMNT, Captain America, etc, so there's been lots of other things to grab the viewing public's attention - I assume you are targeting Frozen keywords, I think they've taken a backseat over the break - keyword exhaustion. So your videos are probably not showing up as much.
- Which brings the second point - if those videos were in suggested for other channels, and they are getting less views, they probably dropped in their ranking in the suggested list, hence they bring over less traffic. If they performed badly, they were likely dropped from suggested, that's why you are seeing a drop in that graph. Easiest way is head over to those videos suggesting yours', and see where your videos are showing up. Anything lower than 5 is small traffic, unless it's a popular video on a big channel.
- The copyright thing probably raises a flag somewhere in the algorithm. It's like that kid in the back row caught cheating on his test. Next time the teacher's going to keep a close eye on him. We don't know if the strike affects anything, I would exhaust the above two options first as the source of traffic drop, then if nothing's left over and you tried changing the thumbnails on the Frozen videos also, it could be the strike.

 

[KatyAdelson]

I've been curious about this actually, but in the opposite growth direction. I once edited the thumbnail of a video (it was the same picture, I just played with the color grading and stuff), and changed the video's thumbnail to the new one that I made. Shortly after that, the video gained a lot of traction out of nowhere. It was like YouTube gave it a "second chance," and it ended up becoming my most-viewed video.. o.0 I've noticed a similar thing happens when using YouTube's video editor. Maybe I should find time to edit the other thumbnails of videos that haven't been going anywhere...I wonder if it would change things?

 

[Idec Sdawkminn]

Ok so prhaps one of the following is happening:

- Disney Frozen (don't we all love that movie!!) has had some competition over the summer: Finding Dory, BFG, TMNT, Captain America, etc, so there's been lots of other things to grab the viewing public's attention - I assume you are targeting Frozen keywords, I think they've taken a backseat over the break - keyword exhaustion. So your videos are probably not showing up as much.
- Which brings the second point - if those videos were in suggested for other channels, and they are getting less views, they probably dropped in their ranking in the suggested list, hence they bring over less traffic. If they performed badly, they were likely dropped from suggested, that's why you are seeing a drop in that graph. Easiest way is head over to those videos suggesting yours', and see where your videos are showing up. Anything lower than 5 is small traffic, unless it's a popular video on a big channel.
- The copyright thing probably raises a flag somewhere in the algorithm. It's like that kid in the back row caught cheating on his test. Next time the teacher's going to keep a close eye on him. We don't know if the strike affects anything, I would exhaust the above two options first as the source of traffic drop, then if nothing's left over and you tried changing the thumbnails on the Frozen videos also, it could be the strike.

Well, I finally gave in and did what you suggested. I took my most viewed-per-day video and changed the thumbnail to one similar to what it was. Here is the realtime 48-hour chart marking the first hour that has the change. I guess people really do like the thumbnails that just have a picture without any text. Maybe the lack of information creates a degree of mystery and it sparks their curiosity: