How The YouTube Algorithm Works in 2022

so we've got a camera camera and a camera hello i'm gonna know that i did my job right here when you get that aha moment when this becomes so simple and crystal clear to you that you can't unlearn it in fact i want you to pretend that you just handed me a thousand dollars for me to teach this to you because it can be worth far more than that if you really get this howdy howdy everyone nate here i'm going to move quickly through this so please re-watch this video at least once to make sure that you get it now it's important to know before we get into this where this comes from i have studied and analyzed thousands upon thousands of youtube videos thousands of youtube channels and i also have my own youtube program called project 24 where i'm able to go even more in depth and know the backend or the analytics and the performance over time of numerous youtube channels all that to say i think this is gonna blow your mind and with all of that i have finally come up with a visual way to represent how the youtube algorithm works so this ring these three rings right here represent the entirety of youtube the entire audience on youtube and within the entirety of youtube we have certain topic sectors that are represent topics covered within the content on youtube so this sector right here might be lawn care this sector might be lawn equipment this sector might be landscaping now is where i start mapping out what it looks like for you and i as channel makers or creators of content on youtube so the reason that i put three rings on this and it is an audience ring right here is that further in is less awareness of a topic within a topic sector and further out is more awareness or more broad appeal for that same topic so we've got less and more so using the lawn care example if this sector right here was lawn care further in or more niche would be how to fix the specific part on this specific lawnmower that would be up here further up this direction further out would be i mowed this person's lawn completely for free and here's what happened so usually when you hear the advice you need to niche down your channel they're talking about going further in and more specialized with the awareness of what is being covered within the channel and further out tends to have more entertainment value or broader appeal now every channel on youtube is positioned somewhere within this entire audience ring and somewhere within an arc right here of topics covered within the channel itself now my channel will be positioned within an area of youtube it could overlap multiple topics but most of the time there's a primary topic that we cover with our channel which rep which is represented right here but the next thing i've seen happen on youtube is that youtube builds out a profile i'm calling it an audience profile of how your audience is positioned on youtube also so the green circle is your channel lens or the area you're trying to target with your content but the algorithm might have built another audience profile that may be slightly different i'm going to come back to that and why that's so important here in a moment you see how i see the algorithm building out this profile is based on both the topics of the content the metadata when you publish a piece of video it builds this out so that youtube starts to see okay this is a profile the type of content that this channel likes but also it's based on performance of that video so when you publish how does that video perform and with what area of the entirety of audience on youtube does this video perform the best now i'm going to switch to just the arc view of the entirety of the audience ring so you can see what happens on a more micro scale when you publish a video so what i've done here is zoomed in on the entire audience arc to show examples with a specific channel so let's say the content of your channel is encompassed in three different topic sectors let's say the area on youtube you're going for is the how to paint some speed painting and some paint supplies and let's say your channel looks a bit like this so the lens you're going for kind of encompasses mostly out of paint but also goes into the paint supplies and some speed painting videos it's a little bit more niche so it's further towards the center or less awareness what happens if your channel looked like this when you publish a video here's how i see it remember you're targeting this area of youtube but you publish a video hopefully when you publish you're publishing somewhere within this area so let's say it's a bit more of a how to paint and showcasing some paint supplies so it goes right here now i wanted to clear up the common misconception that youtube somehow pushes your video out in fact you are just positioning your video and youtube is finding the audience and bringing it to your content in most cases these audiences already exist so even before you publish a video you're targeting this area of all the entirety of youtube you're targeting here what does youtube know they know the metadata they know every single facet of that video they know that the words spoken they know the visuals shown they've crawled it they know all of that data including the title and thumbnail so when you publish a video youtube is looking first at preferences or the entirety of a audience profile meaning this type of person likes this content and therefore you publish something and according to the metadata and the title and thumbnail of that video it might be a match there but then second they're tracking the performance of the video after publish so in this case of this video hopefully you targeted right here and let's say you did it perfectly and you targeted this exact sector what they're gonna do first is test it based on first audience profile and remember i said i was gonna come back to this why this is such a big deal you see based on previous performance from the content on your channel it's possible youtube might think oh this channel is actually about this and in that case if you publish a piece of content this blue piece of content right here within the audience profile then it may do well but what happens if you publish a video and it's actually not within the profile of previous viewers that the algorithm has built out well i'm going to get to that here in a moment for now let's assume that it looks something like this so remember you published this piece of content so it's in the realms of the topic of how to paint and some paint supplies we're straddling the line there and also it's a bit mid-level so it's not very extremely niche or very specific question but it can be a little bit more broad maybe it's how to paint a horse using this specific kit of paint supplies so here is where it gets really interesting because as i've observed the performance of thousands of youtube videos i've seen what they'll do first is they'll test the video based on hopefully where you're targeting and the metadata first including and very importantly factoring in previous audience data so what i mean by that is the audience profile where youtube the algorithm thinks your content is targeting so you publish a piece of content it goes right here they test it with your core audience first then what the very next thing they're going to do is they're going to start testing it with fringe audiences and start saying hey what if this video does this video do well with more of the paint supplies interested audience does it do well and more of a niche how to paint audience and so on to see how the video performs with each of these marginal audiences and if a video does particularly well with an audience let's say it does really well with a more paint supplies focused audience they might say oh that does well hey let's spread this video more and if it keeps doing well hey we're going to spread it even more and this is why they say and i have this literally backed up from words from youtube about preferences first based on the metadata of the video what they see within the video and then performance seconds how the video performs over time how it spreads or how it's received by different marginal audiences all right now i need to talk about why this audience profile is so dang important i'm going to erase this in order to show you now we're going to use the same let's say we're still we think we're targeting this segment of youtube but what if youtube based on the performance of your previous videos or if your channel is small enough it doesn't have enough data what if they think that your audience is actually over here and then going back to the previous example if you published a piece of content over here we're going to have a disconnect if the algorithm sees that your audience is actually over here because they test it first with your audience profile this red ring they test it first with that and if it doesn't perform well because it's over here then many times i see videos being dead in the water which is why i say that it's ideal that remember this green right here is your audience lens where you're trying to target on youtube if the audience lens and the profile are the same that is the ideal space because that means whenever you're publishing a piece of content in there you also have the audience already in the audience profile for it to spread from and in order to do this to get the two aligned you can either follow the audience profile and see well okay where is my audience positioned and then move your lens there or you can keep publishing content within a lens to keep giving the algorithm indicators that this over here is actually where your lens is is this blowing your mind thus far i'm not done yet i'm hoping it is blowing your mind though and if it is thus far i'd love if you would boop the like button so that it can spread to more people and more people can be aware finally understand visually how the youtube algorithm works thank you for doing that you see i need to clear this one more time because there's another concept you need to understand based on audience profile you see what if the algorithm doesn't have enough data on what your audience is it doesn't matter what size your lens is or what you're trying to target on youtube what if the profile that the algorithm has for you is only this big if it's a really small profile this is often the case of very small youtube channels that are just starting off you only have a small data pool to pull from so that when you publish a video it's only going to be within a very small segment of youtube and if the profile is small they might test it here and they might test it here and then that's it and this isn't because the algorithm somehow hates you or your channel it means that in most cases the data or the profile needs to grow gradually over time it's actually a very positive thing because your job then is to keep publishing videos and keep going around this area so that you literally expand the audience profile so that you can see what type of audience likes your content the algorithm can see more and more people are liking this content because this channel has proven that they create good engaging content and i can trust them based on previous viewers to spread it more quickly this is why it seems like larger channels have such a big advantage on youtube because if your audience profile was this big you literally have a larger starting bed of previous viewers of preferences and all of that to test a video with when you publish the algorithm can literally test a video with a larger group from get go which by the way i don't know if you caught that but i just straight up answered why videos perform the way they do on youtube and also why youtube can say that they treat each piece of content independently and yet it keeps seeming like larger channels have their content performed better or spread more quickly it's for this exact reason if you didn't catch that go back and re-watch this section so the kicker here is one of your biggest jobs with your channel is to expand the audience profile to know where you're targeting your channel arc the whole in the entirety of the audience on youtube you have a small channel profile right now or whatever size it is your job is to expand it by literally training the algorithm on what kind of audience you're targeting and that you can produce good videos and each piece of content that you publish drains the algorithm in three ways the first is it shares content on a topic wherever you're targeting the second is it shows the algorithm the audience's reasons for watching your content and then the third is it shows how they like to consume your content all right let's walk through some common scenarios now the most common scenario we'd be looking at is you publish a video and it does not do well let's visually show you why that happens let's say you're targeting this area of youtube but first let's give the example of maybe your audience profile is really small maybe it's really this small and you publish a video right here and it's just being tested with this audience and boom that's the only audience you're gonna get and it's okay because you're continually training the algorithm but for now that's why that happens and that is why for many channels at the beginning you have what i call a ghost town phase of your channel where you're just figuring yourself out you're figuring out your audience you may not even know or be aware of the channel arc or where your lens is targeting and so you're in the process of training yourself but also training the algorithm where to put your content it's not bad it just means you need to keep going but let's say for a moment that you have a more established channel and let's say your audience profile is a bit bigger maybe there's a little bit of overlap but this is the general area that you have your audience if you published a video and it didn't do well the first option is you just made a bad video it wasn't an enjoyable video and that's okay just learn from it that's possible but more commonly especially if you're a more established channel and you've been doing youtube for a while it looks like this you thought you were publishing within your audience lens or the audience profile but you actually published a video over here or over here or even off the map and why this is so significant and i hope you are reading between the lines of what we've covered thus far why this matters so much is because if it's not within your audience profile it will probably not do very well because the test group is off and this video did not do well with your core or your previous audience profile to previous viewers therefore it has a smaller starting group which in many cases let's say you published a video and youtube is trying to test it over here with your audience profile right here but it's not doing well they try some surrounding tests and it still doesn't do well because your video is all the way over here then they're going to say okay at this point we're going to lay off we're going to hold off and maybe do some more generic testing and at that point the testing by the algorithm is a bit more generic meaning they have to just go off of know the metadata but it's not doing well with this audience maybe it will do well with this audience profile maybe over here maybe over here we're not sure so sometimes videos will take off over time why does that happen it's because possibly what they've done is they've tested they tested and then they tried over here remember your original video maybe it was published right here this blue circle right here and they tested and they said oh my gosh okay now it picked up with this audience now we can start expanding it over here and this is why i say that viral videos are almost useless to your channel unless they are within your channel lens or what you're trying to do with your channel because what happens is you'll have an entirely fragmented audience if your channel is this green ring over here and you have a viral video that just exploded over here and it's too far of a gap between them it's a problem but either way it happens because the performance over time showed that that was a good video for an audience profile not necessarily your audience profile or more specifically the audience lens that you're trying to target so what happens if you keep getting indicators that you're targeting over here and yet your videos keep doing well let's say your videos keep doing well over here in the speed painting realm then there's a question of should you pivot or not and in fact as this video goes live i just published a brand new project 24 lesson going much more in depth including a tool that i built to help you map this for yourself the big point here is that this should be actionable and i'm really hoping you're looking through this it's not just a oh that's interesting no i want you to do something because of what you just saw here start mapping out where your channel is because what i've just given you is both the means to map out where your channel and your content is right now and where you think the algorithm is pinpointing your content and not only that but a way to visually show when you publish a piece of content why it performed the way it did you're welcome now at this point there's going to be a myriad of unique questions and scenarios based on what your channel is doing right now so you have two options one is members of project 24 log in today where i just barely published an advanced version of what i just explained including advanced audience location calculation how to perform pivots effectively with this and a built-in tool to help you easily input all of this data so that you can quickly see exactly where your channel is and where your audience profile is if you have no idea what i'm talking about or you're not a member of project 24 you can check it out there's a link in the description the second option is to watch this full guide where i walk you through how to apply all of this knowledge in the sequence of building your own channels successfully so basically knowing exactly what to do at any phase of your channel so i'm excited for you to watch that next and we'll see you there

Channel: Channel Makers

Views: 246,695

Keywords: youtube for beginners, channel makers, how to grow a youtube channel, making money on youtube, youtube algorithm, channel topic, testing, growth, channel pivot, succeed on youtube, beat the algorithm, algorithm explained

Id: R0c_Qf4Wlbo

Length: 15min 5sec (905 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 26 2022