YouTube Insider Exposes How The Algorithm ACTUALLY Works

the YouTube Insider just revealed three ways the algorithm actually works and what I found interesting is how it act like switches inside of a platform that when triggered will push your content to thousands of new viewers and subscribers you see my guess is you spend hours crafting every single video that you post on YouTube you pour your heart and your soul into the ideas you pick the scripts you write the videos you film the content you edit y every single time you hit publish you're disappointed with a result but why why are your videos failing

when you feel you're doing everything the so-called experts tell you well what if I told you it's got nothing to do with you as a Creator the niche that you've picked or the amount of effort you put into your videos and instead the real problem is a simple lack of understanding of how the YouTube algorithm Works what the hell are you talking about well in this video I'm going to try and convince you of that I'm going to share with you three insights this YouTube Insider revealed that going to the Deep mechanics of how the

YouTube algorithm works and once you're aware of these insights you'll be able to create content that reaches out to brand new audiences and build a community around your channel so who is this YouTube Insider well his name is Todd and he's responsible for the homepage and recommendation systems at YouTube and he's been working on them for over a decade now so if anyone knows how the YouTube algorithm works it's Todd we as a Creator Community appreciate Todd because he's willing to put himself out there on video and post on social media to talk about how

how YouTube works and it's these latest round of tweets for xers or twixes that caught our attention and it starts with this the algorithm is triggered by high satisfaction content now it makes sense the algorithm pushes content that clearly satisfies viewers however most creators think that this is only determined by metrics so we're talking about watch time retention likes shares comments but this is where Todd revealed an important factor that many creators basically Miss at the YouTube level a user coming back more often and watching content they report as valued is a strong sign we

are improving satisfaction what I think Todd is hinting at here is that the algorithm highly values returning viewers which naturally means that you should be optimizing your videos so that viewers come back and watch more of your content in the future which leaves us with a big question how do we optimize content so that we create return viewers well let's take a look at what Todd said the audience tab in analytics provides ins ites into videos that attracted new viewers to your channel who came back to watch on another day I think this is a

good signal for satisfaction along with likes subscribers shares and some comments the audience tab is like a window into your audience's mind where you can see what videos are causing people to return to your content so break down your top videos that created the most returned viewers in your analytics Tab and ask yourself are there any patterns you notice between these videos and if fact isn't enough to convince you to stop making random videos on random topics for a random audience then you'll just end up like this the second Insight Todd revealed was this if

you want the algorithm to push your videos you need to create a community feedback Council which I'll come back to in a minute the reason this is so powerful is that it gives you a potent set of ideas that resonate greatly with your audience which means that they're always going to be coming back to watch more of your content I haven't shared the story before but when the world was coming out of the covid lockdown and more people were touching grass the vid IQ YouTube channel was really struggling views were way down there were as

many people subscribing and it was a really big headache to try and figure out I mean here we are trying to guide creators to grow their channels and our channel was shrinking so what did we do we turned to our community for feedback we used the community tab we ran polls we asked questions we doubled up our live stream offering from not just Channel audits but also video Audits and a constant Fe team kept coming back to us the majority of our audience were small Channels with four pain points views subscribers monetization and how to

understand the YouTube algorithm so we made a very strategic decision no longer would we make content to try and rank number one for a particular search T instead we packaged our content that tapped into the emotional desires stresses struggles goals and fears of views monetization subscribers The algorithm them in essence we switched from a search traffic channel to a browse and suggested traffic channel and you should know by now that 70% of all YouTube views come from recommendations not search all of which meant we started growing again and we were helping more creators and we

bugged ourselves one of these oh I can see you've subscribed thank you very much we're Hing to hit 2 million subscribers by the end of this year the tldr of his story is listen to your audience because they matter most and the audience equals the algorithm but Todd's insights take this powerful strategy one step further I personally Foster a diverse community of fans and critics viewers and other creators to give me honest feedback about what was most and least valued in my videos comments are one tool but you have to be careful about selection bias

especially in top comments basically what Todd is saying is that you should create a tight-knit feedback community and this is because contrary to what many people believe the algorithm doesn't push videos that YouTube wants people to watch it pushes videos based on what videos viewers are already enjoying another Point Todd emphasizes is that the aggregate results of what succeeds on YouTube is more a reflection of what emerges from the experiences of many individual viewers versus any coordinated strategy by YouTube to centrally steer content across viewers on mass so R van YouTube Engineers typing in a

bit of code and changing everything determining the fate of your videos it is the get millions of inputs from every single viewer on the YouTube platform that are influencing whether or not your content gets discovered so by having this community feedback Council you're much more likely to make content that your audience really enjoys and this will naturally an organically lead to the algorithm promoting your video more to find new audiences but how do you create this community feedback Council well you can offer your fans and critics something for free for regular feedback on your videos

you can Empower your audience by giving them moderation privileges during live streams that can help represent the viewer opinion of your content and steer it in the right direction you can set up an exclusive Forum or Discord where highly valued members of the community are invited to share their thoughts or you could try setting up a mastermind group of likeminded creators who come together maybe once a week and offer ideas and constructive feedback on each of his videos or if you're not quite ready for any of these steps yet just start posting stuff on that

Community tab it is so so powerful the last Insight Todd revealed is that the algorithm won't know what to do with your videos if they're not in the goldilock zone to explain what I mean we're going to divide videos up into three content zones the first is content that's hyper Niche super specific very targeted towards a very particular audience the second content zone is completely opposite it's trying to appeal to the broadest audience possible and the third content zone is a balance of the two so if your goal is to grow as fast as possible

and maximize those return viewers what's the best Zone to be well this is what Todd had to say try your best to align with what resonates with the audience like with any brand going too broad dilutes connection too narrow may not achieve enough scale to be viable you have to find a balance where there is room in your target market the examples I've just shown you are from content zones one and two which typically will stifle growth a typical video from Ali adal will expect to get hundreds of thousands of views and neither of these

two came close this is because typically the algorithm will first test your video with a subset of your audience if the content is too Niche it may not resonate enough with those viewers if it's too broad it may not create a strong enough connection with those viewers to keep them watching but when you find that goldilock zone where the balance is perfectly weighted between both the results can be amazing for example this video is on a topic that alli's core audience is proven to have a high interest in but it's also appealing to a much

wider audience that may have interest in this topic but aren't currently following Ali so how do you find this perfectly weighted Goldilocks zone well first of all let's make sure that your video topics aren't too Niche the more specific a video is the smaller the target audience so ask yourself this question what are the common goals dreams and desires of my target audience and what are their biggest pain points problems obstacles start there but make sure that you don't go too broad it has to be relatable to the audience that you specifically want to speak

to it's not enough to just make videos about losing weight and making money everybody wants to do that to make topics like this more relatable you have to ask why and how your specific audience is going to achieve those goals and continue to test ideas and when you find one that works use that as your yard stick to work off of for all future videos by simply adjusting your content ideas you can double even triple your view counts not by putting in any extra effort but just more thought and in this video we've revealed how

the definitive expert on YouTube algorithm recommends you do this but if you want a detailed explanation on how to come up with viral ideas that really heat up the algorithm in your favor and I suggest you watch this video next