TubeTalk: Your YouTube How-To Guide
TubeTalk tackles the questions that real YouTubers are asking. Each week we discuss how to make money on YouTube, how to get your videos discovered, how to level up your gaming channel, or even how the latest YouTube update is going to impact you and your channel. If you've ever asked yourself, "How do I grow on YouTube?" or "Where can I learn how to turn my channel into a business?" you've come to the right podcast! TubeTalk is a vidIQ production. To learn more about how we help YouTube creators big and small, visit https://vidIQ.com
TubeTalk: Your YouTube How-To Guide
This Is How To Make The YouTube Algorithm Work For You!
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Have you ever wondered why that "random" video YouTube recommended turned out to be exactly what you wanted to watch? The answer lies in a fundamental misunderstanding most creators have about how the platform actually works.
The YouTube algorithm doesn't push your videos out to viewers—viewers pull videos that interest them based on their watch history and behavior patterns. This single insight completely transforms how smart creators should approach content strategy in 2024. As we discuss in this episode, YouTube has evolved dramatically since its early days when metadata, keywords, and tags were critical ranking factors. Today, the platform operates on a sophisticated system that predicts with uncanny accuracy what content will resonate with specific viewers.
Watch history is the most powerful factor in YouTube's recommendation system. The platform builds detailed profiles of viewer interests by analyzing not just what you watch, but how long you watch it and what you do next. This explains those seemingly random but perfectly matched recommendations that appear on your homepage. We break down real examples of how this "digital word of mouth" connects viewers to content they never searched for but end up loving.
For creators looking to grow, understanding these mechanisms is crucial. Rather than obsessing over tags (which YouTube has quietly deprioritized for years), focus on creating content that naturally follows videos your potential audience already watches. We explain practical strategies for joining ongoing conversations rather than trying to start new ones, and how to transition from purely search-based content to browse-worthy videos that capture viewer interest through emotional hooks and curiosity.
Whether you're just starting out or looking to break through a growth plateau, this episode provides actionable insights into how YouTube's recommendation system actually works—and how to make it work for you. Download vidIQ for free to analyze search trends and content opportunities in your niche, then apply these principles to create videos that viewers will naturally pull into their feeds.
welcome to tube talk, the show dedicated to helping you become a better video creator so you can get more views, subscribers and build your audience, brought to you by vid iq.
Speaker 2:download for free at vid iqcom hey, welcome back to the only podcast that's sometimes international and sometimes is local, and that's going to be happening a lot over the next couple of weeks. Today I'm your host, travis, along with my special co-host today, rob wilson, from the main channel. How you doing, rob?
Speaker 3:hey travis. Yes, you have gone international today and I know this isn't related to today's conversation, but we are recording on a very special birthday for you. Yes, 20 years since me at the zoo debuted on youtube and who knew that would go into such folklore? After 350 million views, 10 million comments, 70 million likes, you can tell I've been doing the maths on this today and who knows how many dislikes. All thanks to will smith.
Speaker 2:What a lore and a history youtube has created for us all it's funny because um 20 years, I mean it's a long time for anything. I remember the last time that I heard something that I saw that said 20 years and made me feel old. I mean, youtube is redoing it for me. Thanks for the flashback. But I remember being in a Target looking, walking past the toy section and I looked on one of the aisle caps and they had super soakers. Do you know what super soakers are? Yeah, we have them over here.
Speaker 2:By the way, this was years ago and they had the 20th anniversary edition. I was done. I was so upset. I was so upset. I'm like wait a minute, 20 years and you say it on YouTube 20 years, like what's going on? Incredible stuff, and the platform today is completely different than it was back then, which is what we're going to talk about today as far as how to get the YouTube algorithm working for you today. But if you're new here, welcome. My name is Travis and we do this podcast every week where we talk a lot about how to grow your YouTube channel and sometimes about candy and other things, mostly about candy.
Speaker 3:Let's be honest.
Speaker 2:Mostly about candy and sometimes about YouTuber-y things.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I come here not to talk about YouTube, just so everybody knows.
Speaker 2:That's great. We can talk about video games and stuff too. But let's real quick, talk about technical difficulties, which I've been having the last couple of weeks, and we'll get right into the YouTube thing because it is mildly related. So technology can be great, but I've had some technological issues over the last couple of weeks, which has included a couple of last couple episodes. So for a while there, for a couple of episodes, I've had to record the audio here on my Rodecaster Pro, which I love.
Speaker 2:But I've had to do it. I've had to do it locally because the audio, when I was streaming here on our platform that we use uh, was getting, was scratching and having these weird sound effects. It was really strange. I come to find out it was a firmware update that I had done on my my roadcaster duo. Um, that was messed up and they ended up having an update that then fixed it. And then so after I get through that, I'm like okay, finally I fixed the issue, I don't have to worry about it anymore. I get a new, I upgrade my computer, get a new video card and videos just start killing and dropping, and this happened in the last episode. Literally at the end of the last episode, my screen goes black because my entire browser crashed. Turns out another driver driver issue technology. There to help you and there to hurt you all at the same time. You got to hate it.
Speaker 3:So is the lesson here Never upgrade any of your tech.
Speaker 2:In a weird way.
Speaker 3:It might be.
Speaker 2:Well now the scary part is I updated all my networking stuff. So I'm at a new router, a new modem right now on new internet connection, so everything's faster. But if something goes wrong it's because I've changed something else. I need to stop doing that I need to.
Speaker 3:I look forward to the buffering icon imminently appearing as your face just but I know I hope not I hope not, because the thing is, this thing is super fast.
Speaker 2:I downloaded 150 gig game in nine minutes yesterday. Incredible, incredible game, is it? Uh? Nba 2k 25. I wanted to play some basketball. I haven't done that in a while. Okay, uh, all right, let's quick, let's get into the things. People here for the like wait a minute. You guys saw my video. Give them what they want. Let me ask you a question, because I don't think I know the answer to this when did you you first start on YouTube? What was your first year that you were doing YouTube or anything?
Speaker 3:So my first video was in 2008. I started taking it seriously in 2012 and went full-time in 2017. So like almost a decade's journey to get to a point where you might call me a professional quote-unquote YouTuber.
Speaker 2:I still find it uncomfortable calling myself that. Well, let's talk a little bit about that, because the way things worked on YouTube back then much different than they are now. Right, and we're going to explain how that works algorithmically in a minute, but once upon a time, things like tags and keywords and stuff were really super high on the list of things you wanted to do. When you uploaded back into like 2012 and stuff, would you say that is that. Is that fair?
Speaker 3:well, I would say the reason I do what I'm doing now travis is because of tags, because I thought this is back in 2015, but tags were were still critical to the metadata of content.
Speaker 3:So I made a video about vidIQ's tools that allowed you to copy tags from other videos and put them on yours, and that's what ended up establishing the connection with Rob Sandy and the rest is YouTube slash vidIQ history at that point. But yeah, I was very much the SEO fiend, I'd say, until about 2018, 19, even though YouTube, probably a year or two before that, were already telling us that metadata wasn't as important. I guess the mystery for me is always when did it stop being that important? Are we talking like 2012, 2013? Right, sooner earlier, and Todd's kind of always hinted at this, certainly since he's been at YouTube, which is, I think, about a decade now. But it's taken many of us, people who were inside the industry, to wean ourselves off this, and we're having a hell of a hard time trying to educate not only creators who've been at this for years themselves, but new creators who, for some reason, still come into the youtube landscape thinking that metadata is far more important than the emotion or the intrigue of a title and a thumbnail.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and so part of that is YouTube educators' fault. Right For many years that was kind of the thing.
Speaker 2:I will hold up my hands, but I mean, it was true, but it was true at one time and while certain aspects of it are still true today, very, very little of it, of what was said even four or five years ago is true today, especially when it comes to the algorithm. Now a couple of things to make note of. Keywords and tags are not the same thing. They're kind of a Venn diagram of can they be similar things? Can they be the same thing in certain situations? Sure, a keyword can be a tag. However, when you're talking about keywords, you're talking about words that are in titles, descriptions and even topics that lead to a topic, basically. So, in other words, a keyword could be what's a good keyword, like cake. Why don't we just talk about cake when I'm here? It could be cake. That could be a keyword. You can put that in the tag section of a YouTube video and if you don't have any kind of viewership like if no subscribers or something and YouTube starts trying to figure out what this video is about, it might use that information for that, and I think Todd would pray once in a long time said we kind of just use it for misspellings at this point, right, like hardly even what the video is about. It's more title and description. But the keywords are important to understand what the interest is in a topic. So we have that tool with vidIQ and it's good to see how many people are searching for that or how many videos have those keywords. So that's different.
Speaker 2:A lot of people get those confused. They think keywords and tags are the same thing. They're not. They can have similar situations. They're not the same thing. So we're not talking about keywords. Keywords are very important, always important. You need to know what's working, what's not. Tags that little section that you have to click down on now and add things in. Which is interesting, rob because I think you pointed this out when they first did that is that it's not easy to find anymore. It's not above the fold, as they say. You actually have to click something to show it. Show them all. Yeah, what do you think that means from?
Speaker 3:the side of YouTube by them putting it underneath of something that you have to click. So they're clearly trying to de-emphasize the importance of tags and have been for a while. My main criticism of youtube on that front is that they had a golden opportunity three, four years ago to completely remove the concept of tags from the lexicon of YouTube when they changed the creator studio from the classic version to the new version, and I think people would have complained about it then, obviously, but because there was so much change going on at that point, I think they may have been able to get away with it in that sense, you know, like I don't mean get away, but like be able to. It's kind of like burying bad news under a lot of changes. Yeah, the same thing. It's not bad news. I think it's trying to eliminate tags or something's important. And then another thing is why they left it at 500 characters when they talk about it only being used for misspellings. Can you fill up a box of misspellings with 500 characters? I think that's impossible. So there's a box there. I'm gonna fill it if it's there, if I think there's a marginal gain of one or two percent.
Speaker 3:I mean, as you say now with tools from vidIQ and elsewhere, it is so easy to just copy and paste and drop in those words as an afterthought After 99% of the other upload. Things have been done for your channel, really. And yeah, just to piggyback on what you were saying about the difference in keywords and tags, I always see keywords as like your dictionary or your thesaurus for your topic. This is you understanding language of your audience so that you communicate with them with the same, with the same language, with the same. What's the right word? I'm struggling to find a way to describe this. It's like just trying to discuss talking to your audience at an intellectual level where you're sharing these things, um, words that we all understand. You know, when we talk about youtube, it's like average view duration, thumbnails, what else?
Speaker 2:like your vocabulary pattern interrupts hooks.
Speaker 3:Like you know, hook is such a generic term in a dictionary, but when we use it in youtube language as a very specific meaning, and that's what we mean when we talk about a keyword now, just including hook as a tag would be pretty useless because it doesn't have that same meaning. So that's what we talk about a keyword. Now just including hook as a tag would be pretty useless because it doesn't have that same meaning. So that's what we mean about in in the context of talking about youtube. We all know what hook means, but just sticking it as a tag in a video, it loses that context. Yeah, I think that's. I think that's probably the best way to try and define the difference in keywords and tags and how one is important and one isn't necessarily as important as it may be.
Speaker 2:Once, yeah, and the other thing is, think about when's the last time you clicked on a video because of its tags. You probably have never done that, because I don't even know that they give you the option to do that. Like where would you see tags other than our tool, right without actual you?
Speaker 3:wouldn't see them. It's impossible to quantify because the if you search specifically for a tag on YouTube I think I did this experiment was it five years ago when I inserted a unique identifier. I think it was like quidditch 54321, like a tag that nobody else would have ever used. If you put it in a title, if you put it in a description, then it will show up in search, but if you put it in a tags area, it doesn't influence whether it shows up in search, and we're talking about something that I experimented with half a decade ago, so that's going to evolve even further at this point.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and I actually even did a video about how YouTube search really works a couple of months ago, and what I thought was really interesting about it was that even while the title and thumbnail or sorry, the title and description can definitely help rank in search, really what it comes down to is what people are getting once they type those words into search and then what they click on next, like it's irrelevant. Like, technically you could have something that doesn't have. What I shouldn't say technically, because it happens all the time where you search for something and those words aren't even anywhere near any description or text or anything, but it's the subject you actually want. So, for example, I think I even said in the video something about you can type in chocolate cake into search and with no context, you could just be wanting to watch a video of chocolate cakes, but everything that comes up is how to make one. Well, why is that? Because most people who are typing in chocolate cake want to know how to make one.
Speaker 2:Well, why is that? Because most people who are typing in chocolate cake want to know how to make it. They don't necessarily want to eat or watch someone eat it, although there are people who want to watch that, but that's not what you would type in for search. If you try it yourself, anyone who's listening. Go to YouTube. Type in chocolate cake, no other context, watch it, and everything that comes up in the beginning is a how-to how to think an interesting experiment there might be.
Speaker 3:Travis is let's say you start an incognito tab or you create a dummy account and you watch nothing but mukbangs and ASMR eating videos and then try, and then on another account you just only watch videos about how to make desserts. Yeah, and then I wonder if how different the search would be like if you're putting chocolate cake, you would assume that for the mukbang ASMR fan it would be all of that related content, but for the other channel with the interest in the tutorials, then it would be all the how-to stuff. That's interesting.
Speaker 2:I actually do want to try that because that could be like a part two of how the YouTube search works. That's a really cool idea. So for anyone who doesn't know, one of the things about when you're trying to target things in YouTube algorithm to figure out what the algo is pushing or actually we're going to talk about in a minute pulling is to have a quote dummy account, an account that doesn't have your watch history or anything because we're going to talk about in a minute why watch history is so important and then just watch videos specifically on that account. So you can actually sign up to multiple accounts under your email address and only watch certain content on that account. So you can see what type of content YouTube is pushing, and that's actually a great place to get ideations for videos in your niche. So if you were to open a start up another viewer account under your email address or whatever, and only watch competitors in your in your niche, you will start to find channels that you've never heard of before in your niche that are doing really great things and can give you some really great ideas for your own videos One of the little secret things that sometimes we tell people to try when they're trying to find out ideas.
Speaker 2:So what Rob is saying here and it's really interesting is based off that, because YouTube understands what you're wanting to watch next, will search, then change and that's you know. To be honest, I don't know. I don't think it will, but I would love to find out. I would love to find out because it would not surprise me if it did, because it would make total sense Interesting.
Speaker 3:I just want to take you back to a little experiment I did. I was doing a session recently for TV executives who are getting into YouTube and I wanted to try and show how quickly YouTube gets an idea of a viewer's interest. So if you open up YouTube and you're not logged in, you don't actually see a homepage anymore, you just see a box that says try searching to get started.
Speaker 3:And it literally says start watching videos to help build a feed of videos that you'll love, right, yep, yep. So I did a search for great british bake-off. I'm sure there's an american version of this. It's like a very popular show and I watched one of those videos. And then I looked at the suggested column and there was another video. That was about a show called come dine with me. This is a show in the uk where each night a contestant hosts the other contestants and does like a meal and entertainment and whatever. So I watched just those two videos and then when I went back to the home page, it recommended me obviously more food videos. Right, what, what?
Speaker 3:what it also realized was that I was probably a fan of reality television yeah and because those two shows are kind of like unscripted, are the unscripted reality shows and so, yeah, it was doing that as well. And then american food versus uk food, and also as well, it must have assumed that I was a certain type of person who was interested in, um, what was it now like cleaning, cleaning your house? Or um, like huge clear out vlogs and stuff like that.
Speaker 3:And that was all from just watching two videos yeah and so yeah, and that must be from all of the trillions of data points that they've been able to grasp from billions of videos that are on the platform. Well, that's an interesting side question. How many videos do you think there are on YouTube at this point, travis? Do you reckon it's still in the billions, or could we be at trillions?
Speaker 2:We're at a number that I don't think we have words for, because a couple of years ago it used to be 500 hours every every minute, but that was before shorts, yeah, so if you take shorts as videos as well, there is a word for it. It's more than Google, because a Google is one with a thousand zeros behind it. It's more than a Google a number of videos, for sure, I don't know. I mean, just within the recording of this podcast, there's probably thousands of videos being recorded every minute that we're talking, which is insane to think about. But let's talk a little bit about what you just said there. So this section right here we're going to talk about right here. I'm going to timestamp this right here, right here. Just, I want you to listen to me right here.
Speaker 2:This is how the YouTube algorithm works and it's important to know how it works. So you know how to get it to work for you, because, conceptually, if you don't understand how something works, it's hard to get it to work for you. So what does the YouTube algorithm do and why do we know this? We know this for a couple of reasons. Number one we do YouTube. We know this. We've been doing YouTube for a long time. We know this, but Todd Boupre from YouTube, who works on the algorithm, actually came on a vidIQ something we used to call vidIQ Max and is on a one of, I think, our second most popular video on our YouTube channel and talked about how the YouTube algorithm works.
Speaker 2:And it's important to understand that when you put a video up on YouTube, it isn't so much that it's being pushed out which is, I think, what most creators think because we think from our side of it pushed out to viewers, it's actually being pulled in by the viewers that are online at that time. Now, once you conceptually understand that, okay, it's not from our side, it does look like it's being pushed out because you see impressions, right, rob? So it's easy to think, oh, my video's being pushed out, when in actuality, it's the people that are online that might be interested in that video that are being pushed too. Is that an important difference? Do you think, if you really break it down, are we slicing the onion too thick?
Speaker 3:I think it is in terms of the consistency of your content.
Speaker 3:I think just from an individual video that you make, you could just assume that, yeah, youtube's going to push it out to people and then, oh, that video did well, I'll just make another video, because YouTube thinks I'm a good creator and I make good videos.
Speaker 3:Therefore, this next video, irrespective of what it's about and who it's aimed at, youtube will again just push it out. But that's not necessarily how it works and it's you have to think of it from a viewer's point of viewing, the sense that if I watch friends and I really enjoy it, but then at the same time, the following week, when I'm expecting another episode of friends instead, the tv network decides to show a football match or a musical, like, oh well, I was expecting this at this time on this network and I didn't get that. So I guess, from a YouTube perspective, all you're doing there is kind of removing the time, because videos can go out at any point on YouTube. But I'm coming to YouTube expecting this type of content from these creators and if those creators don't supply that to quote, unquote the network that is youtube then it won't necessarily decide to give give me that impression for that viewer.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and this all comes down to watch history. So when you're on YouTube, there's actually a little thing on the left-hand side. You can click the little hamburger and you'll see something that says history. It shows all the videos you've watched on YouTube and how long you've watched them. That's why you can stop a video halfway, come back and then it'll replay it from where you started. It's very important. It's really great from a viewer perspective, but it also gives YouTube a lot of information, especially especially if you come back to the same video and complete the video. It's actually a good signal. So how does this all work?
Speaker 2:Watch history is the number one way that YouTube figures out what it it's going to predict that you will want to watch next, and it knows this better than you do. You might think, oh, I know exactly what I want to watch next, but I will tell you almost a hundred percent of the time, based on if you you know Rob just kind of described earlier. If you go to your homepage, you're going to see videos from channels you're subscribed to right Channels you're not subscribed to but have watched before and maybe are on topics that you like and then you're going to see these random videos. They seem random that are about nothing you've ever looked at by video creators you've never heard of, on subjects you would probably never even look at. But I practically guarantee if you click one of those you're going to love it, because YouTube already knows you're going to love it, based on watch history and predictive algorithms, knowing that people who've watched the same things that you've watched liked this video as well.
Speaker 2:So, for example, let's just take the example of Rob and I. Let's say Rob and I both let's say we both watch wrestling videos on YouTube, which is a true statement. We both do watch that, right, I also watch video game, uh videos, and and rob does as well. But let's say I watch a whole other type of um video like, uh, murder mysteries and stuff. Maybe rob doesn't like that, but maybe he watches I don't know what's something else you've watched. It's like, oh, you watch those videos about like the, the, the uk, uh, streets and stuff, right, yeah the uh, the infrastructure of the highways in the UK.
Speaker 3:Right right Auto shenanigans.
Speaker 2:Great channel. I highly recommend it. I definitely have never seen it. Probably wouldn't watch it, right. So we have these things that we do watch that are similar, and then we have these two things that are not similar. So what YouTube does is it looks and says, okay, well, they both watch these very similar things, so we know they're kind of similar watchers. But these two outlying things let's see if anyone else who watches those two things the wrestling and video games watch one of those other two, and if one of those people likes to watch that. Now you've got this thing of okay, now we can test.
Speaker 2:Now, obviously it's not this small. It happens probably millions of times per second. Probably at this point but it's just to give you an understanding Say, okay, well, people who like wrestling and video games might like this, this driving, or this, uh, this street channel, because Rob and two other people who also like wrestling and video games also have watched that. So that's where you'll see that random video pop up on the home screen for people that maybe only watch video games about, uh, videos about video games and wrestling. All of a sudden you get this street video. Like what the heck is this? They click and watch it and they like it. Now there's another data point, and you can just grow upon that knowledge to then predict the type of things that you will like, based on hundreds of thousands or millions of data points that you couldn't possibly ever figure out for yourself.
Speaker 3:Travis, you mentioned wrestling and I have a perfect example I want to show you. I'm going to risk this. I'm going to try and share my screen so people watching can enjoy this. You can see my home screen and in the top left-hand corner, which is predominantly, I'd say, the first video people want to pick up. That's like the prime number one real estate on the YouTube homepage, travis. Can you just read out the title of the video for me please?
Speaker 2:raw versus nitro we living the war, episode 243. I'm very familiar with wrestling bios, uh, youtube channel, so I I watch this particular series religiously.
Speaker 3:Every thursday night, this creator publishes a video about the history of a monday night wrestling wars. Okay, you don't need to know the details. It's fascinating to me. Now here's the crazy thing. Right, If I click on the channel right, and we look at the channel itself, what can you see? Or what am I hovering over right now?
Speaker 2:So I'm glad you brought this up, because I was literally going to talk about this. What you're seeing. If you're watching the YouTube channel, you can see this. He's actually not subscribed to this channel, yet the number one video on his homepage was from Wrestling Bios. One of the things I did want to talk about we'll get there in a minute, but let's talk a little bit about this right now is are subscribes that important? And in the case of this, I call this phenomenon subscribe but not subscribed, because you are getting all of his videos, You're just not subscribed.
Speaker 3:Because you are getting all of his videos, absolutely, you're just not subscribed. Now, the other bonkers thing is Travis. If I scroll down, I don't really watch any of Wrestling Bio's other videos. Yeah, like Bob Holly Hates Everyone, wcw 1996. I'm just following the series, right, and YouTube will recommend those videos, but maybe like on the second row Right or like further down the homepage. But Reliving the, the war, the series the series it knows I'm locked in it knows to that right.
Speaker 2:It knows specifically the videos I was. This exact thing has happened to me the exact video series from that creator. I'll I'll do you one better. I'll do you one better. This when I saw this phenomenon happen, I was so shocked at how good the algorithm was in real time that I already kind of thought I knew what was going on. Then, when I saw this, I was like oh my God, I can't believe this.
Speaker 2:So many a year ago I think it was before I was even with vidIQ I'm not sure, I think it was KSI or something had a boxing match. One of the one of the influencers had a boxing match and, you know, people were trying to stream it on YouTube, but they were getting taken down like quickly, right, like very quickly, cause you weren't supposed to stream it on YouTube. I was watching on YouTube and I saw these channels pop up and these videos pop up and then getting taken down within like 15 seconds Well, some of them faster than others and then I would see these videos be recommended to me on my homepage. That had nothing to do with anything. They were like SpongeBob SquarePants, episode six, and I'm like that's weird. So I clicked on it and it was the live stream from the fight.
Speaker 2:So the creators were trying to completely fool the system by not putting anything in the thumbnail or title about it. But YouTube's recommendation engine still knew, despite the fact that the title and thumbnail had nothing to do with it, that that live stream was what I had been trying to watch before. I have never seen anything like that since, or. But it just goes to show that it knows what's going on in the video and it knew. Just, I didn't watch any spongebob content, it wasn't anything about that. But I even knew and, looking at the thumbnail and title and just some of the ways they were wording things, that that's what it was, and so did the algorithm. It was the most mind-blowing moment about the algorithm, crazy.
Speaker 3:So the automated system is checking. I guess the titles and thumbnails was being circumvented, yes, but the algorithm itself wasn't doing a check on whether the content should be on YouTube Right, in other words, like whether it was copyright material or not. It was only interested in finding the right viewer, yes, or the view was pulling it towards.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, absolutely. It's incredible, and this goes to other things. So some people go well, myself, a shadow band or whatever, and while you can have, like, views suppressed based on different things depending on what it is you're doing nine times I think that's not the case. We've talked about this with um, uh, with moist critical, who you know has a bunch of his, his uh videos that are, um, that are not suppressed, but what would be the right word here restricted, restricted mode, yeah, yeah, um, you can stop sharing here. So I think what's important to know is, even though they were all in quote, restricted mode, he's still getting millions of views every video, because YouTube's the algorithm itself, weirdly, um, we'll still try its best to find the viewer for that content. So how do you use that to your advantage? Knowing that watching people's watch history is really important and people's intention to watch things is very important, how do you do that? Well, hey, you got to know what people are wanting to watch, right, and if you can find a passion within that we talk a lot about passion here on this podcast and if you know the passion for what you want to talk about now, you got to look at like, okay, what is getting views. What is getting views? What are people watching?
Speaker 2:If someone watches this video, for example, the Monday Night Wars you just brought up, if you and I started a wrestling podcast and on day one we have no videos, we're like, well, look, this guy is getting a lot of views every Thursday. He does this. A good follow-up would be something about that same exact subject slash topic that looks familiar enough to the person watching that content that they would be interested in watching ours. So it might be the reaction to that, or a secondary opinion about what was said in that particular video piece, something that funnels from the interest that exists to what would that person want to watch next? So like it, for example, in this thing um, you like to watch the money that works, which I love too. That's actually. It's a great series. There's a great job. I don't know how he gets them out on a weekly basis, cause they seem to be really incredible.
Speaker 3:It's basically producing a television show every week and each one's 35 minutes, and he's got other episodes of other things that come out too.
Speaker 2:It's insane, but how? What would be something that you would be interested in watching, like right after watching one of those ones, if you thought in your head, oh bam, that looks interesting.
Speaker 3:I would watch that next. What would be a thing it might be like a shooting interview, like what I started noticing after watching some of these um episodes a few months back was, for some reason it was insistent on me seeing some shoot interviews. When we talk about shoot in wrestling terms, it's where people are kind of revealing the business a little bit. Yeah, and it was funily enough, the honky-tonk man shooting on the Ultimate Warrior, a SummerSlam 88, saying he didn't want to get a gorilla pressed. So that's why the match was so short. It was like 30 seconds long. I'm sorry everyone if you had no idea what I was saying then, but yeah, it was. Realizer had an interesting, I guess 80s slash, 90s wrestling nostalgia and I just wanted to consume everything. It's kind of like similar with books. Like at Amazon I get recommended nothing but autobiographies from wrestlers of that age. Okay, yeah, it is. Yeah, the internet knows my life and everybody else's basically.
Speaker 2:But it's so true, like, if you think about it, a lot of those videos and anyone who's listening.
Speaker 2:If you look at your Up Next feed, you'll see the same thing happen.
Speaker 2:If you watch a video about something, inevitably you will find a video by someone else about a similar subject. Maybe even that was spoken about in that video and it's not just because the metadata told them hey, this was mentioned, this was mentioned in the video is that people who watch that video went to look for that other content. Maybe, for example, like in a wrestling one I know that, like Jim Cornette will talk about a particular match and then you'll want to go watch the match, so people will go look for that match. And if people do that enough, after watching that video, youtube makes that data connection and makes it an up next video which gets you suggested views, which is what we're talking about when we say how to use it to your advantage. And when you find a really popular video that's talking about something, think to your mind what would a viewer want to watch next? After that, make that video. That video can be then suggested against a larger channels video and get a whole bunch of views.
Speaker 3:We say this often, travis, but it is essentially again. We say this often, travis, but it is essentially again. If we just remove the YouTube jargon out of this, it's joining in on the conversation. Yes.
Speaker 2:And adding your own insight, opinion point of view. Yeah, and it's difficult when you're first starting out and you don't have any subscribers or any views and you're like, well, you know, I can try to make a video that's connected to you. Know, mr Beast, is it going to work? Maybe, maybe not. Like not. All of this stuff is something when you have no viewers or no. It's harder for YouTube to understand what that video is about. They do look at metadata at that point. I mean, todd has said that they looked at the title and description, trying to figure out what this video is about. And then he suggests using search to get your your your first couple of uh views out there, and that would be something like um, so, for example, what would someone search for? Uh, I know we're in wrestle, let's do something, I think yeah we're starting to talk about intent here aren't we so?
Speaker 3:they're either the viewers coming onto youtube for a specific reason to find out about a news story, an event that's happened. They're in a purchasing mode. They want to buy a piece of tech or something. They're trying to solve something in a video game. They're looking for something specific and if you can really hone in on what the viewer is needing right at this very moment and give them the valuable answer, then, as you say, travis, that kind of negates some of the social proofing. You know where you just see stuff on a home page and you look at a tiny channel that's only got 50 views and it's like well, I wasn't. That topic's kind of interesting, but I don't you know. Quote and quote trust that viewer, right, but if you're searching for something and the same video is like third in the list, it still has 50 views, but like the title seems like it's going to tell me exactly what I need to know and like that thumbnail is pretty compelling and it's only three minutes right I'm going to dive in and watch it.
Speaker 3:I think that the key thing is always like once you've been discovered in search for most creators, the last thing you want to find yourself in is being discovered in search over and over and over and over again. Because how often is that viewer going to be in the same intent mode? You're churning through audience very quickly there. You want that next video that they see to be something that's just naturally compelling to them in a kind of entertainment slash, insightful way when they're just browsing around YouTube. And that's kind of what we had to try and figure out.
Speaker 3:Uh, vid IQ, when we were ostensibly a search based channel and we pivoted to more of a browse based channel like a after the pandemic, where you know, a lot of people were in lockdown looking for something to do. Start a new youtube channel, find vid iq but then they they went away and we were really struggling to figure out how we still get discovered, and it was through changing our titles on our packaging to be just more changing our titles and our packaging to be just more compelling from an emotional, yeah, curiosity point of view for the youtube audience in a lot, the creator, the creator, I guess, community, rather than just, um, how do I get a thousand subscribers?
Speaker 3:which is kind of where we were for a very long time, for a long time.
Speaker 2:I think it's also important to think about.
Speaker 2:Like I'll even talk about like an artistic channel. Like what does that mean? That means so, for example, you could do the best 10 paints from Amazon. Now that leverages a couple of things. Number one listicles work pretty well on YouTube period end of story. You're leveraging the Amazon name. A lot of people might be looking to purchase particular types of paints and stuff and they want to know what's the best ones. They're looking at Amazon anyway. So these things, you got all these. You're stacking all these decks in your favor for that video, right, of course the video has to be good and the thumbnail needs to be good, but let's just assume those are good.
Speaker 2:Then, from there, after you have that video, after you brought them in with search again, the intent is to come in and find out which one so I can buy it and probably leave. You might want to get them to come back. And how do you do that? You can say you know how I was able to paint this painting with only two colors. Like now, that's a more intrigued. That's not a search-based video at all. Like you're not, no one's searching for that, but it is interesting, it's intriguing, it's like this the thing looks. I mean, I'm assuming that the picture looks amazing. It looks like more than two colors, but what do I know? I'm not a painter. But that's the intriguing part. That's what we're talking about going from search what are the 10 best paints on Amazon to something intriguing like how I made this painting with only two colors. That's where you go from search to browse and get people to be more a part of your community and like you for your content and come uniquely to you because you are uniquely doing something.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I mean, I guess a classic example of where we've done that is with a certain character who is like the anti-YouTube education expert and trashes channels.
Speaker 2:Yeah wild, isn't it?
Speaker 3:For some reason, the audience loves this guy. I don't understand that either. I don't get it, Travis. I really don't. You can explain that to me. I don't get it, Travis. I really don't. You can explain that to me?
Speaker 2:I've seen that dude around and he scares me to death.
Speaker 2:I feel like one day I'm going to wake up with no job because of him, I don't know. 39.95. 39.95 every five minutes? Yeah, so I think it's, and taking a risk every once in a while is a good thing, you know. I mean I feel like the people who've taken the most risks have the most uh, have succeeded the most, versus some people that are just taking it really safe. Now, to be clear and to be very honest, sometimes being just safe and one note can be all right.
Speaker 2:If you're a search based channel, that's really about bringing in views just for the sake of things like affiliate sales. Fine, go for it, do that thing. You can make good money on YouTube just through affiliate sale videos. Like I just said, these are the best 10 paints. These are the things you want to buy when you're starting up a studio. You can do that and have affiliate linked videos that people will search for for many, many years and you'll make lots of money on.
Speaker 2:There's nothing wrong with that. I think that's amazing and it's actually not a bad idea because it takes your ego out of everything, which I think is super important. The algorithm doesn't care about your ego. It cares about what people are viewing for what they want and what's going to keep them there the longest. So what we've talked about so far is watch. History is important.
Speaker 2:So understanding what people are watching before the video you make, and making your video that you're making interesting to people who've watched a previous popular video, whether it be on your channel or someone else I mean to be honest, to people who've watched a previous popular video, whether it be on your channel, someone else, that's I mean to be honest if you didn't listen to anything else. That right there can help you get more views. Period end of story. But also, um, that things are pulled to viewers, not necessarily pushed from you. So if people are not online that YouTube thinks are going to be interested in your video, you might not get as many impressions. It might not have anything to do with your video and and we're talking about right up front People will eventually come back to YouTube and if your video is good over time, usually you'll get views. That's typically the case and sometimes surprisingly so, as has happened on the vidIQ channel. Many times we think a video is dead and then all of a sudden it blows up. Outdoor boys happen. What was that all about?
Speaker 3:We're still trying to figure it out. You can't see, rob, but if you're, listening. Rob For the podcast audience. I'm doing a shrug emoji.
Speaker 2:He's doing shrug emoji in real life, yeah, yeah, and the tags aren't really that important, but keywords are to understand the interest in people. Of course, you can use the vidIQ tool. There's a link in the description and in the show notes there's a free version where you can go down there and check out what people are searching for and what the intent is. So I think the point of all of this is that, while we can't fully, ever understand the algorithm, we just need to understand its intent. Its intent is to keep viewers on the platform, and what do viewers want? They want to be entertained, educated, inspired, whatever it is they're doing on YouTube, and to figure out what that is. It's less about you, at least initially, as a smaller YouTuber. It's less about what you want and a lot more about what the viewer wants. So you have to put aside some of your interests and stuff, maybe in the moment if you want to grow, which I think most people listening to this want to grow. Put that aside, think about what the viewer wants and give them more.
Speaker 3:You give them more, you always get back more in the long run. I want to add one more piece to this as well, travis, and it's something again that Todd's mentioned, and I've been trying to figure out how to demonstrate this visually. He calls it digital word of mouth, in how content is shared between, I guess, youtube friends who don't know their YouTube friends. I'm going to use you as the example right and again I'm going to share my screen because I think it's worth trying to explain this. Hopefully we can make some sense of it so we're going back to the homepage.
Speaker 3:We already know that the first video suggested was the wrestling one, right? The second video that's recommended is what you briefly mentioned before. With my interest in road infrastructure in the UK. This channel called Auto Shenanigans. Now I would guess, travis, you have no interest in that topic whatsoever, right? So we have no connection there.
Speaker 2:No, and by the way. I practically guarantee a video from this channel will be suggested to me later today or tomorrow, because it always happens when we have these conversations, that's a whole other conversation we're going to have about. Is YouTube listening? But I guarantee it will and I'm going to screenshot it and I'm going to send it to you, rob, but no, normally I would not.
Speaker 3:Please do. If it does, then this just ruins the entire example.
Speaker 2:Let's find out.
Speaker 3:Next recommendation, marques Brownlee. I would say there is a hell of a lot of crossover between myself and Travis. Sure, we're both interested in tech. Yes, we see this creator probably as like an inspiration, a pioneer in the tech industry. Sure, okay. Then on the next row we have some highlights from the English Premier League Again, big interest for me, but I would suspect, travis, you have no interest in that, so that wouldn't be something that connects with you. Next one is a guide on a Samsung Galaxy S 25 Ultra or something Again, something that Travis and I have a very strong interest in tech. I think his is the curveball where I think this digital word of mouth probably comes into play. It's from a channel called Legal Eagle.
Speaker 3:Yes, and it's about like urgent messages for members about some lawyer stuff going on in the US. Now, my guess correct me if I'm wrong, travis is that we probably have like a small or mild interest in this creator and their topic Because, first of all, they're very well known in the lawyer slash law space, but also I think just our probably youtube, through all of its data points, can work out that if we have an interest in tech and if we have a shared interest in tech and a shared interest in us wrestling, then you might be interested in in in legal eagle. Now, I know it's like a stretch, but I just think that, given that this is the last recommendation in the second row I think that's where the digital word of mouth is it might be like hey, travis, I know you like wrestling and tech and this Devin guy from League of League just has a really interesting look on things that I think you might be interested in, just like in a casual conversation. It might be something that we share. So if I'm wrong, let me know.
Speaker 2:no, because here's the thing uh, full transparency. First, I've been using legal google as an example of how to, how to do pivots on youtube for many years. Also, one of his uh show runners, um, I used to work with on another channel, was recently reaching out to me about working with Devin on some stuff. So, that aside, I did want to at least put that out there as, like, hey, I kind of know what's going on with Devin. But I do want to point out something. I'm actually not surprised it's coming up for a number of reasons. Now, for me personally, like I said, there's a lot of reasons because I've always selected him. But if you go to his video page, I think you're going to find this very funny. Go to his video page and scroll down to one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10. So you'll see the one about honey If you scroll down far enough, and then two below that, two rows below that one. Yeah, do you see who's in that thumbnail?
Speaker 3:Let me look. So is this what I'm seeing? So this is from five months ago.
Speaker 2:It's from five months ago. Oh, five months ago. So, if you keep scrolling down, you'll see the like we're suing Honey. But scroll down below that, like three rows below that, and you'll see a face in the thumbnail with him which will answer why. Maybe tech is somewhat involved with this. I mean, I can explain in other ways too, but you see it. If not, let me share my screen.
Speaker 2:Oh, marcus brownlee yeah, in that ironic considering marcus brownlee was on one of was your top level, so that means viewers of mkbhd likely watched that video, gotcha so there's that thing we've been talking about, where viewers who watch different thing are being suggested.
Speaker 2:So legal legal is going to be suggested because some of his videos I mean he's he he's not just been there, he's also been on a lot of other channels, tech channels as well, and his viewerships are cross pollinating with tech. So YouTube is testing you saying, hey, I know other people who've watched Legal Legal are really interested in this and they put it on your homepage. So this is a literal example of what we've been talking about. You have something from MKBHD on your main page and he's worked with MKBHD. He's talked about MKBHD in one of his previous videos and YouTube is now testing to say you should check this out, you might be interested. Exact example. I love that example.
Speaker 3:Probably didn't even know it was an example at the time, but no, no, I did. There's all these unknown connections and links now. Travis haven't been talking to each other about our watching habits prior to this no this, was this just came up just in the moment.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah so, but?
Speaker 3:but the thing is like this this is unknown knowledge until we talk to each other we wouldn't have known this otherwise. Yeah, YouTube is listening to all of this by the actions each viewer takes, and it's able to really tie, put these strands together and link potential interests for viewers all across the globe.
Speaker 2:The view is all across the globe. So what I'm going to challenge the listenership to send an email to theboostatvidiqcom and tell me how you are going to use this strategy in an upcoming video. Like who are you looking at, what topics are trending in your niche and how you want to take advantage of knowing how the algorithm works in this way and how it's being suggested based on other things, and how you're going to use that in your upcoming video. We'll talk about it on some of the upcoming episodes Jen and I are going to do as we're going back to the studio, which is kind of fun Nice.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we'll answer some of those and see what you guys and gals think over there. So we greatly appreciate that. If you're new here, feel free to hit that subscribe button. Of course, if you're listening on the audio podcast, we'd love for you to leave. Leave us five star review on apple podcasts or spotify or wherever you do that sort of thing anymore. And, uh, you know, come and, of course, listen to us again, as we got a lot of hot content coming up, ladies and gentlemen. A lot of that hot content, rob. Thank you so much for joining me today. Man, is there anything that you're working on that you're kind of excited about for people to see?
Speaker 3:so I have a lot of videos that I've filmed waiting for them to be edited. I can't think of anything specifically right now. It's been a lot of youtube updates that I've had to focus on recently, yeah, uh, so I've been tied up with them. But yeah, just usual things from me. This might be kind of interesting. Just, this is a little side thing, we're only going to talk about this for a couple minutes.
Speaker 2:So we do have an editing team. Yeah, just usual things from me. This might be kind of interesting. This is a little side thing. We're only going to talk about this for a couple minutes. So we do have an editing team people who edit some of the videos for the main channel, but not every single video you're in is edited by someone else. Sometimes you edit your own stuff. What is the process that you take to do that? Why do you decide sometimes to edit versus having one of our editors do it?
Speaker 3:All right, this is a good question and it really delves into the psychology of myself as a creator. I call these Maverick videos or Rob's gone rogue. I think we have a bit of. We have. We have this is a bit of a phrase now whereby you know we're part of a team and a lot of stuff goes through a process. Yeah, however, when it comes to youtube update videos, which are very timely, they need to be released, sometimes within 24 hours of the news coming out. I must admit that I still sidestep everybody else in the process, in the team, in the company.
Speaker 3:Now, not to massage my own ego, but I do think, after being on vidIQ for a decade and building up a channel to where it is, I have permission and license to sometimes do that. Permission and license to sometimes do that, but also I do it because it creatively fulfills and sustains me. I call these my happy videos because I'm in my best place as a creator when I can start a video at like nine, eight, nine o'clock in the morning and have it published by 4 pm in the afternoon. Yeah, like I hate, I detest taking videos over to another day because I just lose my train of thought, my creativity, the direction that it's going in. I don't know if anybody resonates with that or thinks I'm absolutely bonkers, that I I like to do stuff in a single day.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, just to have that, I guess, that freedom to make those videos in a single day, and it allows me to like, practice my scripting skills and my editing skills, cause I don't want to lose that skill being in a team and just being, like you know, a talent, reading an auto cue. I don't want to fall into that trap. So, yeah, that that is a very long story of why sometimes I make videos completely by myself, because I still kneel, I still feel that need of independence and the agency agency to say you know what, I'm just going to do something like this today and go and do it, and the audience reacts to it well, so I think I have the audience's permission to do it well, they always perform well, yeah, so I think I have the audience's permission to do it Well, they always perform well, yeah, yeah, I think it sounds fun, a fun idea on the live stream to have a Rob Goes Rogue moment or corner Like every five minutes.
Speaker 2:You just every five minutes at the end of one episode, rob Goes Rogue, and you put on like a heavy metal hat or something I don't know what that would look like and you just do something weird and just I don't know.
Speaker 3:I could 3D print something.
Speaker 2:yeah, yeah that would be cool. That would be great. I think it'd be fun, and if you want to see more of Rob Kors, you can check it out on the main vidIQ channel. Otherwise, we would love to see you back here next week on the next episode. See you in the next one.
Speaker 1:We hope you enjoyed this episode of Tube Talk brought to you by vidIQ. Head over to vidIQcom slash TubeTalk for today's show notes and previous episodes. Enjoy the rest of your video making day.