YouTube is Very Fair. Stop Complaining.

[wasabiroots]

Yep what was said is technically what I have been thinking. But sometimes it makes me doubt it because comparing 2 of my videos of similar length, one has 50% retention the other has 40% retention, the one with the 40% retention is getting 6x more views per day compared to the one with the higher retention. Is it because it has been up longer? There are others like that in my video collection as well.

A while back someone showed a graph of what minimum retention for what certain length of videos was, it looked like an exponential decay graph if I remember correctly. Dunno if the number is still relevant because of how the algorithm is slowly changing and getting improved.

It said something like, 80% for 2 minutes, 50% for 5 minutes, 30% for 10 minutes(?) I honestly don't remember other than the ones below 5 minutes because it was almost a straight horizontal line when it reached 20+ minutes.

Anyways, it would be awesome if we know exactly what's the minimum percentage retention is for the length of the video. If anything, its like a goal people could aim for and could be a good indication that things needs to be changed.

 

[Jawad Soomro]

I agree with all points. But the fact is YOUTUBE is populated with lot of videos that hardly our videos get recognition. Even after improving all the aspects of our channel, if we still don't grow, that means something is wrong with the system. There are many other youtubers who don't have even a quality of sharing their content and they get away with the views. They do an AD CAMPAIGN to get promoted straight away.

 

[iMSaiyan]

I agree but even with your degree, you basically said the obvious that I think everyone should already know in this place. Retention rate and view time, what's the difference? You explained two things that are the same in two different ways lol. View time of 5 minutes on a 10 minute video is the same as retention rate....so yeah, your degree stumped you there man LOL. Big channels have the cream of the crop when it comes to where they place their videos, regardless of tags or not why?

Because 1. REVENUE, they bring in the most revenue and only YouTube knows this, and so they place their video on TOP always. No one understands YouTube's algorithm exactly but it's obviously that BIG CHANNELS, with HUGE SUBS, obviously will have more retention time and they will inevitable always stay on the top.

2. Retention rate / view time = REVENUE - everything goes back to revenue, YouTube can care less about "tags" and s**t they really just want the big boys to stay there and make them money, tags really only matter to the other 90% of YouTube that are the smaller channels and then place them secondary, you can't compare anyone with the bigger channels because they get top priority no matter what unless they stop making that $$$ for them.

For those who don't know all this, thanks for explaining it to them but otherwise, it's pretty self explanatory I was hoping for a deeper insight.

 

[chottom]

Your analysis is correct but your conclusions are somewhat wrong.
YouTube has the fairness of broken slot machine which all long time users know how to "tickle" so it can give them the "right result" but almost all new users just lose their time and money with it unless they are lucky enough to stumble upon the "magic trick".
This is actually due to the imperfections of their algorithm (you like so much) coupled with some other purely human factors (no time to go into details).
But as I said - your analysis in general is quite good.

 

[KidsCorner]

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.

Thanks for your post and I agree with most of regarding the algorithm. One thing was not so clear to me and it's about above part of your post. I understood that you disagree with people posting that youtube algorithm is not fair. But in defense of a lot of people on this forum, I think a ton of advice out is focussed on marketing your site better byt getting your SEO right, your thumbnails, your content, etc which helps Youtube market your site.
Besides that, a lot is shared on how to use social platforms to your advantage and a lot of time is spent on not going the sub4sub route (every thread about it will tell the same thing).
I also think that every advice on the forum as well is to be patient, you wont be picked up for promotion much in the first few months just because you don't have any authority yet build up in the algorithm, even if you have the best content that potentially will be loved by millions a day. You just haven't been picked up yet by people or the YT engine.
I agree though with your point though, if you haven't been picked up after many months yet, you're either in a tiny niche or something you're doing is not right but isn't that what a lot of people here are pointing people to as well in every post?

So my question to you, can you go in a bit more detail what you think is wrong on the advice/view people give out here?[DOUBLEPOST=1473061764,1473061194][/DOUBLEPOST]

I agree but even with your degree, you basically said the obvious that I think everyone should already know in this place. Retention rate and view time, what's the difference? You explained two things that are the same in two different ways lol. View time of 5 minutes on a 10 minute video is the same as retention rate....so yeah, your degree stumped you there man LOL. Big channels have the cream of the crop when it comes to where they place their videos, regardless of tags or not why?

Because 1. REVENUE, they bring in the most revenue and only YouTube knows this, and so they place their video on TOP always. No one understands YouTube's algorithm exactly but it's obviously that BIG CHANNELS, with HUGE SUBS, obviously will have more retention time and they will inevitable always stay on the top.

2. Retention rate / view time = REVENUE - everything goes back to revenue, YouTube can care less about "tags" and s**t they really just want the big boys to stay there and make them money, tags really only matter to the other 90% of YouTube that are the smaller channels and then place them secondary, you can't compare anyone with the bigger channels because they get top priority no matter what unless they stop making that $$$ for them.

For those who don't know all this, thanks for explaining it to them but otherwise, it's pretty self explanatory I was hoping for a deeper insight.

I would put it slightly different in my view, the big boys get the views regardless of their SEO because they build up enough authority at some point and delivered. Youtube trusts them blindly as long as they deliver and they keep promoting them regardless of their crappy SEO. If the channel stops delivering though, Youtube will prioritize the next big boy and they would need to regain their lost authority.

The other 90% of us out there battle their way up, compete with each other over the small portion of suggested videos Youtube reserves for the new and upcoming. Do well there and you will gain authority every time you do it right until you're big enough to be one of the big boys.

 

[Lightsen]

Yeah I agree with you, youtube does play favourites, but as much as I might not enjoy many of the big youtubers content, I can't deny that the majority have worked very hard over a long time to get where they are, I think they deserve the spotlight weather their content is to my tastes or not.
(not so sure about the really clickbaity ones though)

I used to think it was unfair on animation to have those with longer content get favoured even if my small video may have 98% retention, and their 10 minute one have 40% or some, but I honestly can't see any other way they could have done it, it got rid of a lot of clickbait content, and I'm very happy for the change, even though its going to be tough for my channel, and other animators and short film makers.

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.

Definitely agree with this! my latest video did REALLY well for me, and it was all down to the browse feature home page promotion. Now I feel less reliant on external sites, which is great, because they are harder to predict.

I would put it slightly different in my view, the big boys get the views regardless of their SEO because they build up enough authority at some point and delivered. Youtube trusts them blindly as long as they deliver and they keep promoting them regardless of their crappy SEO. If the channel stops delivering though, Youtube will prioritize the next big boy and they would need to regain their lost authority.

Don't forget SEO is for the 'search engine' so it probably wouldn't affect your home page promotion all that much. So big channels can get straight from search to reccomended and home page simply from their initial sub base.

 

[KidsCorner]

Don't forget SEO is for the 'search engine' so it probably wouldn't affect your home page promotion all that much. So big channels can get straight from search to reccomended and home page simply from their initial sub base.

True, not directly but indirectly right? I'm no expert on this stuff but to be picked up on homepage promotion you would need to build authority first right? Either because of external factors promoting your video, you appearing in loads of searches, you being promoted in suggested videos, etc. All of it builds your authority and it's being used to get you promoted more into search, suggested and browse features which influences your views, subs, retention, etc and adjusts your authority accordingly.

While we can't control suggested and browse features, we can control search (SEO) to build up authority which positively impacts suggested and browse feature promotion. We can control subs and views by e.g. external sources, adwords promotion, playlists or posting on people's YT channel (incl Sub4Sub) to improve authority in those areas but if done wrong you will lose authority on e.g. retention.

 

[Kousuke-shii]

I know about the retention and the watch time of Youtube for quite some time now since I started a few months ago. But i'm really amazed at how you explained it and it opened my eyes to a few more stuff that I never even knew. Awesome post man, 10/10 would like again.

 

[Gaijillionaire]

Thanks for jusynout and saying it. Some channels are just bad and nothing is going that change that. Videos that are garbage still wouldn't make it to some magical "discover" tab! I don't claim to know the ins and outs but you're right about popular videos going up and unpopular going down. And they do give new videos a push. if you've tagged it properly it can rank among the big ones and if it watched will stay up.

 

[Loki Doki]

while you make some good and valid points. you don't fully understand how the algorithm works, no one does fully, you can't work it out in 2 months, thats quite laughable no matter good your education, youtube keeps a lot of it secret for a reason, so people son't find the loopholes and all the content becomes the same recycled s***e because that works well. far more inteligent people that us have spend careers working on this stuff

you also missed a MASSIVE point regarding youtube and how they value channels. and that is bringing people onto youtube. and starting them on a watch session. by that i mean youtube really values any channel that can get someone to log on to youtube to watch the video and then stay on youtube and watch more videos (not just your own videos, anyones)

a example would be if i tweeted about my latest video on twitter, random guy sees my tweet, click it, goes to watch my video, then goes on to click a few random suggested videos and spends a couple of hours on youtube. thats gold right there. your attracting people to the platform (this is not my research, this is research done by experts over the course of years) session watch time is huge for youtube

as for likes and dislikes. your wrong about that. getting likes and dislikes still shows engagement, its not massively important but every little helps. its not as powerful as say a comment but it still helps

as i said there is some really useful stuff in your post that people should learn, i think you could have written it better, like your top tips for how to grow on youtube, instead of a look at me, i am more intelligent that you, now bow down to my greatness and let me tell you exactly how it is

one final point, your point about youtube being 100% fair, this is a weird discussion, some people see fair as "if i make a identical video to pewdiepie, same title, thumb, tags, same retention etc, all that good stuff, then i should rank (in the search) the same as pewdiepie". where other might say its fair that he ranks much higher because he has proved that his videos do well (even though they are identical in every way)

some people might consider it not fair that some unknown could create a fantastic amazing video, better than 99.9% of other youtube videos but because he sucks at SEO or Thumbnails etc, it never gets found, as afterall, youtube should be about the content right?

i don't think its got anything to do with what you or anyone considers fair. i think its a case of "this is how youtube works"