TZJINZO
I've Got It
Greetings Ladies and Gentleman,
Edit 3: Foreword: the use of this post is for informative purposes only. I am not here to demonstrate any form of superiority over anyone. My writing style is overly direct, I admit, but I find it's the best way to get concise information across. I simply intend to clear some misconceptions about SEOs, strategies and unhelpful myths lurking around. You're all great people, and I love you all.
I hope the title got your attention. Now, give me just 5 minutes of your time, and I will explain to you how the 'YouTube algorithm' really works.
Before we start, I want to introduce myself as Jinzo - this is my YouTube and online alias. There are a lot of viewpoints in this forum that I strongly disagree with regarding the fairness of YouTube. Not only do I disagree, but I also contest the majority of channel promotion methods being advertised by users, and I honestly believe I am objectively correct on this matter. I know I probably sound overly arrogant in this opening statement, but please, let me justify my viewpoint and I promise it'll be worth your time. You are all fabulous people, I have nothing against any of you.
To begin with I will open with this claim. I believe the YouTube algorithm is, in my opinion, a very fair system that rewards great content. People misunderstand how it works. We don't need a 'New Talent' tab, nor are bigger channels being given an unfair advantage. In addition, if your channel is not getting views after months and months, your content is probably uninteresting to viewers.
Now, why should you trust my opinion? I have studied YouTube for the past couple of months since I started my channel, attempting to understand the underlying Mathematics of the website to my advantage. I do, have a PhD in Astrophysics, with emphasis on coding and Mathematics, and have spent over a decade working on code very similar to what YouTube employs. And, quite frankly, the complexity and completeness of the YouTube algorithm impresses me, even from an academic standpoint. It's almost... artistically executed. The Mathematicians have outdone themselves at google.
But, I am not here to brag about my degrees and what bits of paper I may or may not own. Let me explain how the YouTube algorithm works concisely so you can decide for yourself.
The trouble new YouTubers have is that it's hard for them to get discovered, and they see bigger channels getting all the views.
The reality is, YouTube care not for views but only for four critical factors (and some nuances that I don't have time to explain for now):
Firstly, it's the view time on each video on your channel, how long each video is viewed for. When someone clicks into your video, it will count as a view, but how long did they actually watch this video for? A person that finishes watching a 10 minute video is worth, in YouTube's eyes, 10 times more than someone else finishing a 1 minute video. This is not to do with ad revenue, don't get confused. This is how YouTube ranks how great your content is.
Secondly, not only is it about view time, but also retention rate. You cant just upload 1 hour videos, arbitrarily attempting to increase your view time. Retention matters, and it matters a lot. YouTube even scales expected retention with video length, such that 50% retention on a 1 minute video is seen as a very poor video by YouTube's algorithm and 50% retention on a 15 minute video is seen as absolutely superb. If you have a poor retention rate on a video, delete it immediately. It will put your channel in the red as I will explain in point three.
I will elaborate these two points due to some confusion between the two.
View time and retention are different. If you obtain a very high view time due to search and advertisements, but have low average retention, YouTube will penalise you. This is why clickbaiting doesn't work as well as people believe it does. If you have very high retention, but very few views, then it means your content is not interesting for a large audience. This is a generic view as there are exceptions, but it's fair as far as I'm concerned.
If you're wondering what the critical threshold is for large scale YouTube promotion, it's around 10,000 minutes viewed and 50% retention for a 15 minute video within 3-7 days. This is video specific, not across your entire channel. If you cannot achieve this, then you won't get promoted on a large scale. If your video is shorter, say 3 minutes long, then you would still be expected 10,000 minutes viewed and around 80% retention. Any less then it's no good. This is how retention and view time fundamentally differ. Please don't get confused as the replies to this post seem to suggest.
Also, views from advertisements, external sources, are weighted far less. If you get a lot of external views and retention from advertisements, which is extremely hard to do, because advertisements will get far less retention in general. In other words, YouTube won't promote you because you got high retention and views from external sources such as reddit. It needs to be real views from within YouTube.
Thirdly, channel reputation. The total sum of your retention rates, combined with your view time matters to YouTube. It holds a deadly grudge against channels that have poor retention. This is a very dangerous game, as if your retention is poor, then none of your videos will show up on search, it will never be recommended to viewers, and you will, consequently, never get any views.
Fourthly, interaction rate. How much your subs view your channel and care about your content. If you have subs that don't view your videos, this also decreases channel reputation. STOP asking your mates and parents to sub if they don't watch the ENTIRETY of your videos.
EDIT: I will add point number 5 here, and that's SEO as people seem to be interested (and rightly so).
Fifth. SEOs. So the common stance on this forum is to update tags, thumbnails and have the right title. Although necessarily, I believe SEOs to be a running scam on YouTube advice, and here's why.
It is obviously necessarily to tag and create a decent thumbnail. There is no need to discuss this point.
However, video title and thumbnail MUST reflect the content accurately. If it doesn't, then people will click into your video (clickbaiting) and then click out faster than a genuine viewer. While you may have gotten a view and view time, your retention has taken a huge hit. Goodbye channel.
What about tags and titles? Often I see people putting longer titles and many tags related to your video. Mistake. The more tags you use, the less each tag is weighted by the algorithm. If they were equally weighted then we should just put every word in the dictionary into the tags. How is that fair? The less tags you use, the stronger you are. Almost every single video of mine shows up in top 3 of search, because I use a measly 3-6 tags in my video which represents the true content of my videos.
The same is true for titles, the longer your title is, the less weighted it is by YouTube. Putting your channel name in each video is another damning mistake, because your channel name is automatically included in the tag even if you don't put it in the title or tags. You're diluting your tag weighting. Yes big channels get away with it because they have huge subscribers. You can't because you have few viewers.
That's basic SEO out of the way. Please stop telling people to do loads of tags and big titles. Do. Not. Do. It.
EDIT 2: Session time. This matters substantially as well. After watching your video, how likely is the viewer to watch your next video. This also pushes the odds in your favour. This is why having multiple viral videos will cause your to explode in subs.
Why do the above five points matter? Why does anyone care about this?
The reality is, the way channels get the vast majority of views if you want to grow, is not by search, nor by external views. It's about the browse features, you need a video to be good enough for YouTube to promote you on people's homepage feed. This is the ultimate form of a viral video.
If you own a gaming channel for example, and you don't get views over the period of months, it's because your channel sucks, plain and simple. Youtube has seen your channel, and because of your poor average retention and view time, it deems your channel simply unworthy to be promoted.
Why would it promote content that people only watch a tiny fraction of? Only channels that are able to keep viewers engaged for prolonged periods of time will grow. All this sub for sub, show your friends your channel, is pure nonsense. If you show your friends your channel, they will likely watch your channel for a minute and close it. They may do this once in a while to checkup on your progress, never to fully finish a video. This is VERY DAMNING for a YouTube channel, because the algorithm will assume your content is terrible, hence why the viewer closes the video so quickly.
So, to conclude, if you have a channel that has 1000 subs but few views per video the reason is this. Your subscribers aren't really into your content, they will click in and out quickly, lowering your retention rate. A lot of 'nice' people will open up a video, to leave a comment like 'cool video', but pushing down your retention. Do this 10 times on a video only viewed 30 times, and you have a dead video, well done. It will never get promoted, or show up properly in search bar. Do this on a videos in a row, and you can kiss your YouTube career goodbye.
Big channels get recommended, and promoted because they manage extremely high retention rates and view times. People like their content, and it also makes people watch their other videos after. This is how channels grow exponentially in size. Say I have 4 videos 10 minutes long. The viewers watch them one after another. In about 500 views, YouTube will start promoting your videos like wildfire and if your videos continue to live up to the retention expectations, then you'll get a gigantic amount of subs in a short duration, and YouTube will continue this indefinitely until/if your retention drops.
PS - Likes and dislikes mean nothing on a video (it does tell you how many people agree with you disagree but does nothing for SEOs and video rank), asking for likes does nothing to promote your channel. You need retention and view time. This is why extremely disliked videos will still get big, like Nicole Arbor and JB's older songs.
Will edit this for typos and fluidity. Depending on feedback I may extend this post to be much more detailed and longer. I have much more data on statistics, revenue, demographics and a bunch more of things I could say on these topics that could warrant a thesis. But, I'll stop for now.
If people dislke this ugly truth, mods feel free to delete this post. I have nothing to lose. I just feel like you guys deserve better than the constant generic advice peddling on this forum as of now. I love this site and it's people. I just disagree with the myths and rumours around here, it's not helpful.
PS - if you're a serious gaming channel add me on Steam I need more YouTube friends for video ideas and discussions.
I'll answer questions here:
YouTube will only recommend your videos to communities that will watch your content. Yes the latter part of your statement remains correct.
Ok so there is a critical threshold of viewtime and retention combination you have to reach before YouTube will consistently recommend your video, and promote through browse features (homepage). I find this number to be reliably to be around 10,000 minutes of viewtime. Any less than that and no reliable results. But, it needs to be coupled with high retention for its video duration as well. 10,000 minutes on it's own is meaningless. For example, if you have a 16 minute video with 10,000 minutes viewed, and 50% retention, this is the sort of videos YouTube will promote.
FYI, 30% retention for a 10 minute video is poor. At 10 minutes you should be looking for 55-60% retention or you will unlikely be promoted. This threshold is also competed vs other YouTubers making similar content so it varies slightly but not massively due to content.
No, it's not obvious at all. Retention and view time are completely different as I described in OP. If you have high view time, but low retention, it still means your video is terrible and will not be promoted. If you have high retention for a video, but no views, your video will also not be promoted. Sorry but if you create a video that no one is interested in searching or clicking, then it also, does not deserve to be promoted.
Big channel don't care about thumbnails, titles, or tags because their subscribers, and the people recommended their videos have high retention and view time, so it will be promoted regardless of tag.
Sorry but bigger channels have higher subs and retention videos because they make good videos. If the videos were rubbish they would have low retention.
Also, I have done some experimenting to get to these conclusions, I'm not pulling this out of my a**. I won't be elaborating too much further on the exact numbers for reasons I won't explain here.
Edit 3: Foreword: the use of this post is for informative purposes only. I am not here to demonstrate any form of superiority over anyone. My writing style is overly direct, I admit, but I find it's the best way to get concise information across. I simply intend to clear some misconceptions about SEOs, strategies and unhelpful myths lurking around. You're all great people, and I love you all.
I hope the title got your attention. Now, give me just 5 minutes of your time, and I will explain to you how the 'YouTube algorithm' really works.
Before we start, I want to introduce myself as Jinzo - this is my YouTube and online alias. There are a lot of viewpoints in this forum that I strongly disagree with regarding the fairness of YouTube. Not only do I disagree, but I also contest the majority of channel promotion methods being advertised by users, and I honestly believe I am objectively correct on this matter. I know I probably sound overly arrogant in this opening statement, but please, let me justify my viewpoint and I promise it'll be worth your time. You are all fabulous people, I have nothing against any of you.
To begin with I will open with this claim. I believe the YouTube algorithm is, in my opinion, a very fair system that rewards great content. People misunderstand how it works. We don't need a 'New Talent' tab, nor are bigger channels being given an unfair advantage. In addition, if your channel is not getting views after months and months, your content is probably uninteresting to viewers.
Now, why should you trust my opinion? I have studied YouTube for the past couple of months since I started my channel, attempting to understand the underlying Mathematics of the website to my advantage. I do, have a PhD in Astrophysics, with emphasis on coding and Mathematics, and have spent over a decade working on code very similar to what YouTube employs. And, quite frankly, the complexity and completeness of the YouTube algorithm impresses me, even from an academic standpoint. It's almost... artistically executed. The Mathematicians have outdone themselves at google.
But, I am not here to brag about my degrees and what bits of paper I may or may not own. Let me explain how the YouTube algorithm works concisely so you can decide for yourself.
The trouble new YouTubers have is that it's hard for them to get discovered, and they see bigger channels getting all the views.
The reality is, YouTube care not for views but only for four critical factors (and some nuances that I don't have time to explain for now):
Firstly, it's the view time on each video on your channel, how long each video is viewed for. When someone clicks into your video, it will count as a view, but how long did they actually watch this video for? A person that finishes watching a 10 minute video is worth, in YouTube's eyes, 10 times more than someone else finishing a 1 minute video. This is not to do with ad revenue, don't get confused. This is how YouTube ranks how great your content is.
Secondly, not only is it about view time, but also retention rate. You cant just upload 1 hour videos, arbitrarily attempting to increase your view time. Retention matters, and it matters a lot. YouTube even scales expected retention with video length, such that 50% retention on a 1 minute video is seen as a very poor video by YouTube's algorithm and 50% retention on a 15 minute video is seen as absolutely superb. If you have a poor retention rate on a video, delete it immediately. It will put your channel in the red as I will explain in point three.
I will elaborate these two points due to some confusion between the two.
View time and retention are different. If you obtain a very high view time due to search and advertisements, but have low average retention, YouTube will penalise you. This is why clickbaiting doesn't work as well as people believe it does. If you have very high retention, but very few views, then it means your content is not interesting for a large audience. This is a generic view as there are exceptions, but it's fair as far as I'm concerned.
If you're wondering what the critical threshold is for large scale YouTube promotion, it's around 10,000 minutes viewed and 50% retention for a 15 minute video within 3-7 days. This is video specific, not across your entire channel. If you cannot achieve this, then you won't get promoted on a large scale. If your video is shorter, say 3 minutes long, then you would still be expected 10,000 minutes viewed and around 80% retention. Any less then it's no good. This is how retention and view time fundamentally differ. Please don't get confused as the replies to this post seem to suggest.
Also, views from advertisements, external sources, are weighted far less. If you get a lot of external views and retention from advertisements, which is extremely hard to do, because advertisements will get far less retention in general. In other words, YouTube won't promote you because you got high retention and views from external sources such as reddit. It needs to be real views from within YouTube.
Thirdly, channel reputation. The total sum of your retention rates, combined with your view time matters to YouTube. It holds a deadly grudge against channels that have poor retention. This is a very dangerous game, as if your retention is poor, then none of your videos will show up on search, it will never be recommended to viewers, and you will, consequently, never get any views.
Fourthly, interaction rate. How much your subs view your channel and care about your content. If you have subs that don't view your videos, this also decreases channel reputation. STOP asking your mates and parents to sub if they don't watch the ENTIRETY of your videos.
EDIT: I will add point number 5 here, and that's SEO as people seem to be interested (and rightly so).
Fifth. SEOs. So the common stance on this forum is to update tags, thumbnails and have the right title. Although necessarily, I believe SEOs to be a running scam on YouTube advice, and here's why.
It is obviously necessarily to tag and create a decent thumbnail. There is no need to discuss this point.
However, video title and thumbnail MUST reflect the content accurately. If it doesn't, then people will click into your video (clickbaiting) and then click out faster than a genuine viewer. While you may have gotten a view and view time, your retention has taken a huge hit. Goodbye channel.
What about tags and titles? Often I see people putting longer titles and many tags related to your video. Mistake. The more tags you use, the less each tag is weighted by the algorithm. If they were equally weighted then we should just put every word in the dictionary into the tags. How is that fair? The less tags you use, the stronger you are. Almost every single video of mine shows up in top 3 of search, because I use a measly 3-6 tags in my video which represents the true content of my videos.
The same is true for titles, the longer your title is, the less weighted it is by YouTube. Putting your channel name in each video is another damning mistake, because your channel name is automatically included in the tag even if you don't put it in the title or tags. You're diluting your tag weighting. Yes big channels get away with it because they have huge subscribers. You can't because you have few viewers.
That's basic SEO out of the way. Please stop telling people to do loads of tags and big titles. Do. Not. Do. It.
EDIT 2: Session time. This matters substantially as well. After watching your video, how likely is the viewer to watch your next video. This also pushes the odds in your favour. This is why having multiple viral videos will cause your to explode in subs.
Why do the above five points matter? Why does anyone care about this?
The reality is, the way channels get the vast majority of views if you want to grow, is not by search, nor by external views. It's about the browse features, you need a video to be good enough for YouTube to promote you on people's homepage feed. This is the ultimate form of a viral video.
If you own a gaming channel for example, and you don't get views over the period of months, it's because your channel sucks, plain and simple. Youtube has seen your channel, and because of your poor average retention and view time, it deems your channel simply unworthy to be promoted.
Why would it promote content that people only watch a tiny fraction of? Only channels that are able to keep viewers engaged for prolonged periods of time will grow. All this sub for sub, show your friends your channel, is pure nonsense. If you show your friends your channel, they will likely watch your channel for a minute and close it. They may do this once in a while to checkup on your progress, never to fully finish a video. This is VERY DAMNING for a YouTube channel, because the algorithm will assume your content is terrible, hence why the viewer closes the video so quickly.
So, to conclude, if you have a channel that has 1000 subs but few views per video the reason is this. Your subscribers aren't really into your content, they will click in and out quickly, lowering your retention rate. A lot of 'nice' people will open up a video, to leave a comment like 'cool video', but pushing down your retention. Do this 10 times on a video only viewed 30 times, and you have a dead video, well done. It will never get promoted, or show up properly in search bar. Do this on a videos in a row, and you can kiss your YouTube career goodbye.
Big channels get recommended, and promoted because they manage extremely high retention rates and view times. People like their content, and it also makes people watch their other videos after. This is how channels grow exponentially in size. Say I have 4 videos 10 minutes long. The viewers watch them one after another. In about 500 views, YouTube will start promoting your videos like wildfire and if your videos continue to live up to the retention expectations, then you'll get a gigantic amount of subs in a short duration, and YouTube will continue this indefinitely until/if your retention drops.
PS - Likes and dislikes mean nothing on a video (it does tell you how many people agree with you disagree but does nothing for SEOs and video rank), asking for likes does nothing to promote your channel. You need retention and view time. This is why extremely disliked videos will still get big, like Nicole Arbor and JB's older songs.
Will edit this for typos and fluidity. Depending on feedback I may extend this post to be much more detailed and longer. I have much more data on statistics, revenue, demographics and a bunch more of things I could say on these topics that could warrant a thesis. But, I'll stop for now.
If people dislke this ugly truth, mods feel free to delete this post. I have nothing to lose. I just feel like you guys deserve better than the constant generic advice peddling on this forum as of now. I love this site and it's people. I just disagree with the myths and rumours around here, it's not helpful.
PS - if you're a serious gaming channel add me on Steam I need more YouTube friends for video ideas and discussions.
I'll answer questions here:
YouTube will only recommend your videos to communities that will watch your content. Yes the latter part of your statement remains correct.
Ok so there is a critical threshold of viewtime and retention combination you have to reach before YouTube will consistently recommend your video, and promote through browse features (homepage). I find this number to be reliably to be around 10,000 minutes of viewtime. Any less than that and no reliable results. But, it needs to be coupled with high retention for its video duration as well. 10,000 minutes on it's own is meaningless. For example, if you have a 16 minute video with 10,000 minutes viewed, and 50% retention, this is the sort of videos YouTube will promote.
FYI, 30% retention for a 10 minute video is poor. At 10 minutes you should be looking for 55-60% retention or you will unlikely be promoted. This threshold is also competed vs other YouTubers making similar content so it varies slightly but not massively due to content.
No, it's not obvious at all. Retention and view time are completely different as I described in OP. If you have high view time, but low retention, it still means your video is terrible and will not be promoted. If you have high retention for a video, but no views, your video will also not be promoted. Sorry but if you create a video that no one is interested in searching or clicking, then it also, does not deserve to be promoted.
Big channel don't care about thumbnails, titles, or tags because their subscribers, and the people recommended their videos have high retention and view time, so it will be promoted regardless of tag.
Sorry but bigger channels have higher subs and retention videos because they make good videos. If the videos were rubbish they would have low retention.
Also, I have done some experimenting to get to these conclusions, I'm not pulling this out of my a**. I won't be elaborating too much further on the exact numbers for reasons I won't explain here.
Last edited:
Oh okay. I see how it is.