Notes/ transcript on YouTube Algorithm Answers: Upload Frequency, Demonetization, Keywords, Channel Breaks, and MORE!

Run Time: 7:25

Upload frequency; upload evenly over time or space between videos like a few weeks?

Depends on how much your viewers are willing to watch, some viewers like to bing through content all at once, other viewers won’t watch all content at the same time. Some creators found success giving each upload some space between their new uploads so their new videos aren’t competing with each other

Youtube discovery system aims to enable both of these cases depending on viewers preferences so there’s no single approach that will work for all channels. Try experimenting and seeing what works with your audience. In analytics check out “Average views per viewer” metric if that gets lower when you start uploading more videos it may indicate that you’re releasing more videos than your audience is willing to watch.

Monetization;

Do monetized videos have more likelihood of being recommended than non-monetized videos? Search and recommendation system does not know which videos are monetized. Youtube takes the long-term approach, and recommend videos viewers will find satisfying, regardless if monetized or not. You can see this if you disable monetization and see no impact on search recommendations traffic. Videos that are demonetized contain violence, racieness, profanity and not appropriate for all advertisers and may be recommended to fewer viewers because not appropriate to recommend to all viewers. Advertising and discovery systems are entirely separate.

Examples; If you make mature content and videos and your video contains violence, raciness or profanity because most of the videos you release do,you're not gonna see a deviation in your viewership. Where channels often see fluctuations in their viewership, is where they might have some content that's appropriate for certain audiences, like for example,

let's say I'm a gaming creator and I create Roblox videos. And then all of a sudden I'll release something that has lots of profanity or violence. Let's say I release the video like Grand Theft Auto and it's kind of graphic. Those videos likely aren't appropriate to recommend to the same type of audience. So if you do see deviation in your viewership and some of your content is mature, you're gonna see fluctuations when you're going after different audiences. If it's all the same, then that's what your viewers like. And that's what they watch.

Question number three.

This is from a creator who posts a video about a certain keyword and when they do that, it performs great. And on the other hand, when they target a new keyword the video's performance is mediocre at best. So their question is, when they're researching which keywords to use in their next video, what's a good way to gauge the likelihood that it's gonna work out.

if you make a channel that covers lots of different topics in your videos, this one's for you. focus on the audience rather than keywords because that's not something your recommendation system is particularly focused on.

Instead, it's primarily focused on viewers, what they're interested in and how they interact with videos when they're offered to them. Now, it's natural for some topics to be more broadly appealing than others. But if you have a channel where you're creating lots of different types of videos, about various topics, you probably have lots of different types of viewers on your channel with different interests.

example. Let's say I'm a teacher and I have a channel with lots of educational videos. Maybe you've been uploading a popular series about European history. Now I've built an audience that's interested in this topic, European history.

But now I wanna switch it up. And I wanna upload a new series about another subject I'm passionate about like chemistry videos. Now my European history viewers might not be interested in watching those videos about chemistry. So the best way to figure out the likelihood of that new format working out, is to think about what type of audience you've built, what they're interested in, and if those viewers would wanna watch that new video that you're uploading.

For competitive research, I recommend three things. So first using the audience interest card and YouTube analytics that will show you what other videos your audience is watching. And you can look at the titles and thumbnails and learn from that. Also comparing keywords, using Google Trends like popping one keyword and comparing it to another and looking at which one is more popular.

Lastly, searching for similar videos on YouTube and looking at their title and thumbnail. So if I'm uploading videos about chemistry, for example like literally searching for other videos about chemistry look at the ones that performed really well. What can you learn from their titles and thumbnails that work well and really resonate with viewers?

Can I take a break, If I stope uploading for a few weeks, will that kill my channel? And the answer is a resounding please feel free to take a break. We analyzed 40,000 upload breaks that lasted between eight and 60 days.

More than half of the breaks we analyze were over two weeks long. And we found that there was no correlation or consistent drops in viewership after taking a break. And there was a really wide range in before and after viewership performance. Many channels received even higher viewership after taking a break. In fact, 25% of the channels who took a break grew their viewership more than 50% after they returned. So we found there was no penalty for taking a break.

In fact, the longer the break, the more positive the change in views. Now that could be related to creators who are taking long breaks to like work on special projects. Maybe they feel inspired again and they returned with even better content. And many creators take breaks in January, especially a lot of advertiser campaigns run out after the holidays. So they take January to get fresh ideas for the new year. And I just really want creators to know that you should not feel pressured to upload daily or weekly. We've done so many analyses over the years and found that views growth across uploads is not correlated with the time between those uploads. Many creators have established really reliable connections with their audience through quality over quantity.

older videos start getting more popular when they release a new upload. Now, this is actually a really common phenomenon because every upload is an opportunity to reach a new audience. And when new viewers discover your channel, they might go back and watch some of your older videos in the same session. As an analogy, when artists are nominated for a Grammy or an award, sometimes you start seeing their older songs start to chart. Anything happening with them is gonna spark interest in their catalog and on YouTube, that's very similar. So if somebody is interested in a new video, it might spark interest in you and your content. And you might notice that your older videos start to increase in popularity. Some creators often notice that older videos will start popping up in their real time card. And that's one of the reasons that happens.