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Home Guides How the YouTube algorithm works in 2024
A guide to the YouTube algorithm
 * Guides


HOW THE YOUTUBE ALGORITHM WORKS IN 2024

By
Russel Lim
-
January 29, 2024


IN A NUTSHELL

 * The YouTube algorithm prioritizes valued watch time, rewarding videos that
   keep viewers engaged and satisfied.
 * Key metrics like click-through rate and audience retention are crucial for
   creators, as these factors determine how well a video performs in the YouTube
   algorithm and its subsequent reach.
 * For new creators, focusing on a specific niche and consistent content
   creation is more beneficial than striving for perfection in each video, as
   this helps the algorithm understand and target the right audience for their
   content.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

To widen their chances of receiving attention on the platform, creators must
work with the YouTube algorithm. That is the simple reality of YouTube. However,
there is a certain mystery surrounding how the algorithm actually works.

Let’s look into how the YouTube algorithm decides whether your latest video will
reach the eyes and ears of thousands of potential fans, subscribers and
customers, or be doomed to gather dust on the digital shelf along with millions
of others. We’ll start at a high level, analyzing the primary goals of the
YouTube algorithm. Then we’ll zoom into the finer details of the metrics and
mechanics behind it. With this knowledge, you can make the algorithm work for
you and take advantage of the potentially unlimited reach that YouTube can
offer.


THE MAIN GOAL OF THE YOUTUBE ALGORITHM

YouTube is a business that runs primarily on advertising revenue. They have a
strong financial incentive to keep viewers watching for as long as possible.
Like that friend who insists you take another slice of cake, even though you’ve
already had three. It seems like the algorithm is designed so that you click,
watch, click, watch and repeat until you forget what sunlight feels like.



Now, YouTube Public Relations would beg to differ (slightly). In an article by
YouTube’s VP of Engineering and Recommendations Cristos Goodrow, he explains how
the algorithm is not designed just to maximize watch time. Rather, they have a
concept called “valued watch time.” This is the primary goal and North Star
metric for their recommendation system, more widely known as the YouTube
algorithm.

“We don’t want viewers regretting the videos they spend time watching and
realized we needed to do even more to measure how much value you get from your
time on YouTube,” said Goodrow.

Valued watch time is calculated from pure watch time using data extrapolated
from user surveys. If you’ve spent enough time watching YouTube, you’ve probably
seen one.



The surveys don’t come up that often, but apparently, YouTube receives millions
of survey results daily (don’t forget they serve billions of videos per day.)

It makes sense for YouTube to want to make its viewers happy. Happy viewers come
back to watch more videos (and ads) or even sign up for a premium subscription.
So, if your videos can make your viewers happy, whether through entertainment,
education or giving them whatever it is they were searching for when they came
across your video, the algorithm will reward you accordingly.


HOW DOES THE ALGORITHM DECIDE WHICH VIDEOS TO RECOMMEND?


YOUTUBE’S FALLBACK STRATEGY: RECOMMENDING THE MOST POPULAR VIDEOS

This is the most unsophisticated and brute-force technique when it comes to
recommendations: “Just show them what everybody else watched.” But, it
undoubtedly still plays a large part in the highly sophisticated algorithm used
to this day.



To see what we mean, just try logging on to YouTube from an Incognito or Private
browser window. We guarantee you’ll be offered at least one MrBeast video,
probably one with over a hundred million views. There will probably be some
Selena Gomez or other popstar clips, again with millions of views. Perhaps
you’ll also see some current sporting events that have been attracting the
attention of the masses within the last few hours or days. Without any data or
browsing history, it makes sense for YouTube to fall back on recommending what’s
popular or trending.


POPULARITY AND AUTHORITY

Popularity can also be a proxy for authority. Imagine you are searching on
YouTube for a way to fix your leaking toilet. You’re presented with two video
choices, both claiming to help you solve your problem. One has 4.4 million
views, and the other has 87 views. Which one would you be more likely to click?
Almost assuredly the 4.4 million one.

That might seem like an extreme example, and you might wonder why we’re
stressing the point that popularity is an advantage. After all, you can’t just
flick a switch and become popular overnight. How does it help you to know that a
beginning YouTube channel competing for views is like a tiny firefly dancing for
attention beneath the Times Square fireworks display?!



Well, to start with, it helps to set realistic expectations. It helps to know
that if your first few videos only get a handful of views it doesn’t mean you
failed or that they’re not good videos.

Also, it helps to realize that you need to pick a small target audience and
focus when starting out. You can’t compete with MrBeast, so don’t try. You
probably can’t even compete with the 4.4 million view toilet fixer. But if
there’s a specific model of toilet that you know better than anyone else, then
focus on helping people with that specific toilet (you can substitute “toilet”
with whatever is relevant to your channel). Again, YouTube will reward you for
making its viewers happy.


USING CLUSTERING TECHNIQUES TO MATCH VIDEOS TO USERS

Moving beyond the most basic strategy of recommending popular videos, the
algorithm uses clustering to group viewers and videos. A clustering algorithm is
any algorithm that groups objects into clusters that are in some sense
“similar.”



As an example, below is a cluster analysis I, the author of this article,
performed on articles written on medium.com. Each bubble represents a “tag”
(like a hashtag), and bubbles are arranged into clusters based on which tags
were used together.

Clustering analysis of tags used at medium.com

The primary metric the YouTube algorithm uses is consecutive viewing, or watch
history. If two videos are regularly watched together, then they’re clustered
together, and viewers of one video are likely to recommend the other. Similarly,
two viewers who watched and enjoyed the same video, or set of videos, are likely
to be recommended similar videos.

Again, it’s a pretty simple concept but surprisingly powerful. With enough data
(and YouTube gets literally billions of video views per day), YouTube can
quickly learn which viewers will likely enjoy which videos. For those viewers
that are logged in to YouTube with their Google account, YouTube has access to a
rich history of every video they clicked on, scrolled past, watched, liked,
disliked, shared, etc. With this, it can predict what you are likely to want to
watch before you even think about typing into the search bar.




WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR YOU AS A VIDEO CREATOR?

It means that you need to think carefully about which viewers have watched and
enjoyed your previous videos. These people include your subscribers but are not
limited to your subscribers, especially if you only have a few hundred. The
people who have watched your most recent videos are the first people who will
get recommended your new video. If these people choose to click, watch and like
your new video, then it will be distributed more widely. If they don’t, it
won’t.


JUDGING THE QUALITY OF EACH VIDEO

There are several metrics YouTube uses to decide whether viewers receive a video
well. The two most important metrics are click-through rate (CTR) and audience
retention.


CLICK-THROUGH RATE (CTR)

There is a good reason this was the number one ranking factor mentioned by the
YouTube VP of Engineering. CTR is calculated as the percentage of people who
click on your video link once it is presented to them. The YouTube
recommendation panel is a highly valuable screen for real estate. The YouTube
algorithm aims to fill it with videos with a strong probability of being clicked
to keep viewers on the platform and engaged.



YouTube provides creators with each video’s CTR in the YouTube Studio app. Found
under the Reach tab, these numbers need to be high for the algorithm to favor
your video.

How high is high enough for a CTR? That depends on your niche, experience, and
the size of your channel. Google’s YouTube Help page tells us, “Half of all
channels and videos on YouTube have an impressions CTR that can range between 2%
and 10%.” So, a CTR above 10% is great, while a CTR less than 2% probably means
your video will not continue to be widely distributed. Once you’ve uploaded five
or 10 videos, you will begin to see what an average CTR looks like for your
channel. Then, aim to beat that average on your next video.


HOW CAN YOU IMPROVE YOUR CTR?

It’s counterintuitive, but it really does not have anything at all to do with
the actual quality of your video. After all, when the viewer decides to click —
or not — they haven’t started watching it yet. So, the key triggers you have to
pull are the title and the thumbnail.



The title and thumbnail should entice a potential viewer to click. The best
titles take advantage of viewers’ curiosity and interest or generate an
emotional reaction. You’ll notice that most successful thumbnails contain a face
and that face conveys emotion (excitement, curiosity, fear, etc.). Look at the
titles and thumbnails of the top-ranking videos in your niche. You will start to
see what works. What do your viewers want, what motivates them and what excites
them?

The best titles and thumbnails seem to border on “clickbait,” and you need to be
careful not to cross that line. However, it can help to get close. After all,
you really do want them to click. As a general rule, if your video offers
something in the title, then you should deliver it in the video. Ideally, make
it clear that you will deliver it within the first 30 seconds. If the viewer
clicks in but then clicks away within a few seconds, your audience retention
statistics will be poor. A high CTR but low retention won’t be enough to make
the algorithm happy.


AUDIENCE RETENTION

The second key metric is audience retention. Basically, this measures how much
of your video did the viewer watch after clicking through. YouTube Studio gives
you a retention chart for each video you publish. It’s normal to lose up to 50%
of viewers within the first 30 seconds. People are busy and often have short
attention spans. Again, think of how you interact with YouTube as a viewer. Do
you usually watch all of every video you click? Or, more likely, do you scroll,
click, scroll, click, watch, like, scroll, click?



This is why it’s so important to start your video strong. Get to the point;
don’t waste words. If you can keep 70% of viewers for the first 30 seconds, and
50% of the viewers until the end, the algorithm will love it and reward you for
it.

Again, this emphasizes the need to avoid clickbait in your title. Don’t promise
something that you cannot deliver. If somebody clicks in and only watches three
seconds, that is a strong negative signal to the algorithm. It would actually
have been better if that person had not clicked in the first place. This is why
you should be careful about posting your YouTube video on Twitter, Reddit or
another social platform where users are quickly scrolling through lots of
three-second posts. How likely are they to stop and watch your video for several
minutes?

So, if your CTR is high and your audience retention is high, your video will be
distributed well by the algorithm. Again, what “high” means is relative. Let’s
say that if your CTR is higher than average and your audience retention is
better than average for your channel, that video will be distributed more widely
compared to others on your channel.




YOUTUBE SHORTS

YouTube Shorts may have started out as a TikTok competitor, but now they are
undeniably popular in their own right. You can’t avoid Shorts now on YouTube.
Not only are they heavily recommended on the YouTube home page, Shorts can even
show up in response to regular Google searches.

The algorithm for YouTube Shorts is similar to that described above, but has
some differences that are worth mentioning. First, CTR is not so relevant here
because most viewers don’t get to see a Short by clicking on a thumbnail and
title. Rather, they just get it served to them as part of a feed when they swipe
up from the previous Short. Audience retention is still critical, but the time
frame is different. Rather than looking at the first 30 seconds, it’s the first
2 seconds that matter. You need to stop the user from swiping. Most viewers
swipe through several Shorts before actually stopping to watch one.


STOPPING THE SCROLL

Something interesting needs to happen within the first 2 seconds. Begin with an
attention-grabbing introduction that immediately sparks interest. Utilize visual
cues, text overlays and dynamic transitions to retain attention. Delivering
value in a concise format is key, so focus on delivering a clear message or
entertaining moment that resonates with your target audience. If your Shorts
have a narrative or educational component, tease the content’s value upfront and
promise a satisfying conclusion. Strong retention rates signal to the algorithm
that your content is engaging, increasing the likelihood of wider distribution.



Beyond that, if you can involve viewers by encouraging likes, comments and
shares, this also helps the algorithm promote your Short. Engaging with your
audience through comments can trigger a positive feedback loop, signaling to the
algorithm that your content is resonating with viewers and warranting wider
distribution.

One thing to remember with Shorts is that the demographic of Shorts viewers may
differ from your regular target audience. By different, we primarily mean
younger. But this is likely to change as short-form content becomes increasingly
popular with all demographics.


TIPS FOR STARTING OUT ON YOUTUBE

The advice given above about focusing on your niche and pleasing your target
audience is harder to implement if you have a very small channel. This is
because YouTube just doesn’t have enough data on your audience to extrapolate to
other people who may like your content. If the algorithm shows your video to 100
people and they happen to be the wrong people for your video, it may not get
many more views beyond this.



So, when starting out, consistency and quantity are more important than actual
quality. Of course, your videos still need to be good. But, for example, if your
video is 90% in terms of quality and you are considering spending another four
hours to get the quality to 100%, you may be better off publishing the 90% video
and using that time to create more content.

Once YouTube gets more data on your audience, the algorithm will be able to
serve you better and show your videos to more of the right people .That’s when
the quality really matters.

The YouTube algorithm is designed primarily to serve viewers, not creators. At
the same time, there are adjustments in the algorithm designed to help identify
the right target audience for small channels. YouTube assures that:



“We do care about small creators. We actually have teams that are dedicated to
making sure small creators can still break through on YouTube.” Todd Beaupré
said at VidCon 2022

So, don’t be disheartened if your first few — even your first 30 — videos don’t
get as many views as you think they deserve. Focus on consistency, and you
should start to see the views and audience retention improving over time.


HOW TO MAKE THE ALGORITHM WORK FOR YOU

In summary, aim to continually improve your CTR, audience retention and viewer
satisfaction. The key to success lies in delivering value to viewers by
identifying a target audience and niche, becoming a trusted guide in that
domain, and consistently offering satisfying content that aligns with viewers’
interests.



You may have heard the phrase: “You’re just one video away.” This saying means
that one video can be all it takes to shine the spotlight on your channel and
attract the audience you are aiming for. That’s the magic and power of YouTube.
The platform has such a large viewer base that once one video goes viral and
grows exponentially, there is really no limit to the number of people your
content can reach.

Good luck, and enjoy the journey.

Contributing authors to this article include Russel Lim and Jo Mayer.



Image courtesy: Deep Neural Networks for YouTube Recommendations

 * TAGS
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Russel Lim
Russel Lim is a high school mathematics teacher based in Melbourne, Australia.




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