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How YouTube Recommends Videos

by WarriorForum.com Administrator
2 replies
Search Engine Journal says that YouTube's VP of Engineering just explained the factors that go into recommending videos on users' home pages.



YouTube just offers its most detailed explanation yet regarding its recommendation engine and how it chooses which videos to display on your home page. The company's VP of Engineering published a blog post and a video Q&A addressing the most common questions from viewers and creators.
  • What Matters More - Watchtime or Retention? YouTube creators often ask what the recommendation engine values more between viewer retention and overall watchtime. Put another way -- is 50% of a 5-minute video better or worse than 3 minutes of a 10-minute video? In this case, 3 minutes is an overall longer watch time, but it's only 30% of a 10-minute video which is weaker retention compared to 50%. YouTube's data indicates that people tend to be more satisfied when they watch a greater percentage of the video. But that doesn't necessarily mean retention is valued higher than watchtime.
  • How Long to Get Recommended? At one point or another, YouTube creators may find themselves asking how long it takes for videos to get picked up by the recommendation engine. It sometimes happens that videos do not gain visibility on the home page until months after they're published. That's not by design, however, as videos should begin to get recommended immediately. YouTube can't always do that if it doesn't have enough data to understand who a video should be recommended to. This is typically the case for newer channels that YouTube doesn't know much about.
  • Why Aren't Small Channels Recommended More Often? Both viewers and creators complain about YouTube not recommending small channels often enough. Again, that goes back to the last point about YouTube having limited data to determine who the right audience is for the videos. For new/smaller channels, this may sound cliche, but you have to ask for engagement. There's a reason why successful YouTubers repeat the line: "like, subscribe, and hit the notification bell!" YouTube depends on those signals to recommend videos.
  • Do Subscriptions Influence Recommendations? There's a theory among YouTube creators that an ideal views-to-subscribers ratio must be maintained in order to appease the recommendation engine. There's no truth to that theory because the influence of subscriptions varies by user. If a user subscribes to a channel but rarely watches its videos, then YouTube is not going to recommend the channel's content to that user. It doesn't matter how high a channel's views-to-subscribers ratio is. The likelihood of its content getting recommended depends on how users respond to it when they see it on their home page.
#recommends #videos #youtube
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  • Profile picture of the author OKPlodder
    Google's and Youtube's algorithms are a puzzle any time, and whatever these two say about this platforms, we'll probably never know how they work. Have you noticed how Google sometimes returns results in their SERPS that for sure are too substandard to make any sense?
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  • Profile picture of the author jin Seo
    Youtube recommend a video based on its views, its searchable, and its content. And I think, if you want to promote your video to a widen target audience, you should add subtitles to it. I'm using Subblink at the moment, and I find it's doing quite well. It exactly translate my videos, and doesn't affect my videos after I download the subtitle version.
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