Analyzing the YouTube Algorithm

YouTube is now one of the largest and most influential social media sites in the world. One of the most commonly misunderstood things involving YouTube is its algorithm. The importance of understanding the algorithm is not lost on YouTube’s content creators. Without appealing to what the algorithm looks for or likes many YouTubers will be a hit or break depending on how much the algorithm displays their videos. Previously YouTube’s algorithms were based on a system of channel watch time, subscribers and the number of views. With that in mind creators focused on maximizing those attributes, but within the last year, YouTube has focused on fine-tuning its algorithm for its viewers. The new version of YouTubes algorithm considers the following variables per individual; videos watched, click-through rates, average time spent, likes, dislikes, comments and feedback submissions combined with everyone else’s data to decide where to serve content to viewers. What this means for content creators is that they need to streamline all their videos in order to maximize likes and people watching a video all the way through. Content creators now must do different things in order to appear in different areas on YouTube. In order to show up in the search section, they must properly streamline the title, description and video content in order to show up when people are searching for videos of a certain query. In terms of the search section titles and thumbnails have become the top two factors for discovery on YouTube. Suggested videos are entirely based around what the viewers have been watching recently. For content creators to continue to have their content displayed here they must make very similar content regularly that the algorithm can recommend as a similar video. For the home page and trending sections, the focus is on the overall growth of views in order to be trending not just overall maximum views but the videos that are increasing the most on that day.