YT Insights #3 - How Does the Algorithm ACTUALLY Work?

In past posts we have talked about how CTR, AVD and Viewer Satisfaction 'affect' your video’s performance. Let’s understand WHY by explaining How YouTube’s infamous Algorithm works.

First, you need to understand what happens when You open the YouTube app on your phone or TV, or visit youtube . com

In a split second YouTube decides, out of all the videos in the platform, which are the best options to show YOU personally, to hopefully ensure you start a watch session.

It figures this out based on the content you have watched in the past, and considers things like time of the day (you don’t watch the same types of videos in the morning, than before bed) and previous watch sessions or niches you’ve been interested in recently.

Here is our first key information:

YouTube Algorithm’s Goal is to fetch the best Videos FOR each Viewer.

It DOESN’T fetch Viewers for YOUR Video.

The Viewer decides what videos they want to watch, not the algorithm. Understanding this difference is important. If you are not getting views, it means you are not creating videos that people want to watch/click on (or they can’t understand why they should watch them, as we’ll see in following posts).

How does the Algorithm find viewers?

The first thing the algorithm does when you upload a video is analyze it.

Believe me, Youtube’s AI knows exactly what your video is about, you can’t fool it.
It takes millions of points of data (this is not an exaggeration) from your video:

It analyzes your video frame by frame, categorizing and naming what appears on screen, same for the thumbnail (It can read the text in the images, and categorizes every object or human that is featured, to the point of knowing their name if it’s a famous person), all of this through their Google Cloud Vision API.

It also reads the captions it generates (or the ones you upload with your video, which I recommend you do, as they will be more accurate), it measures the viewer’s behavior while watching your video (do they skip through it? do they pause? are they restless or focused? how much of the video do they watch?) and what they watch next after it.

So regardless of what title and tags you use in your video, and any other SEO tricks you may think of, the fact is YouTube knows very precisely what your video is about.

Then you may ask,
How does it find which viewers to show my video to?

You must remember the algorithm is triggered when someone starts the app or visits the page. The algorithm tries to find people it thinks will be interested in it based on the data it analyzed, but it is guessing. It needs to gauge its performance to figure out if its a video worth sharing to other users. Remember, it wants people to stay on platform the longest possible.

Its goal is to find people who click on it (CTR), who watch a big part of the video (AVD), and enjoy it (Viewer Satisfaction). Then, it will look for viewers who have similar tastes / watching behavior as those people!

Once YouTube finds the type of viewer that enjoys your video, it wll start delivering it to them. Its the reason videos suddenly explode in the algorithm.


It might take a long time (weeks, sometimes months for newer channels) to find the correct audience for it. But if the content is good, and there exists an audience for it, the algorithm will match the content with that audience.

My first video took almost 2 weeks to find its niche. And its still getting views today.
It also only got 70,000 views in its first month. But its closing in on 600,000 views today (proving most views on a video come in the following months, not its first weeks, as we've mentioned before).

But Manu, why isn’t MY video getting recommended?

I would suggest looking at your Impressions in your YT Studio Analytics. You may find it IS getting impressions every day, but very few people are actually converting from Impressions to Viewers, or they stop watching very early in the video. Then, you can look at your CTR and AVD to find where the issue is.

I checked and the values are actually really high! Still no views

This is hard to gauge on channels that get very few daily Impressions, as the values may deceive you since the sample size is small.

But here’s the most likely culprit:

The algorithm is a RANKING system. It recommends the Videos that Viewers are most likely to enjoy. This means your Video will ALWAYS be compared to other videos in the same niche, or covering a similar topic.

Which niche/topic? This is something YouTube decides, but remember it is very accurate when understanding what your video is about.

My point here is you may think all your metrics are fantastic, but there might be a video that’s doing even better (slightly better CTR and AVD), and since that video Ranks higher, that’s the video that will get served to people.

There are 2 ways we can escape this:

1. Make the very BEST video on the entire platform for topic you’re covering.

That’s what I try to do with my videos (and I’m still learning how to do it). It is why it takes a long time to make them. But if you manage to do it, that’s how you can create evergreen videos that keep getting videos years after their upload.

2. Make Videos that people can’t get in any other channel.

For me this is the best approach, this is the essence of what being a Youtuber is!
Make videos that you’re passionate about, with topics You NEED to yell to the world about.
That way you’ll create videos that your viewers can only get from you. We’ll talk more about this when we cover Video Ideas.

This is also the problem with people that try to imitate other youtubers.
Even if you actually managed to imitate their style, why would they watch You if they can just go to the real thing?
The same works backwards, if you manage to develop a voice of your own, people will always come to you for it!

My final advice is to replace the word ‘Algorithm’ with ‘Viewer’.

Since the goal of the Algorithm is to recommend videos the Viewer wants to watch, make videos that Viewers want to watch.

“Why didn’t the algorithm like my video?” to “Why didn’t more viewers like my video?”

“How can I make this the best video for the algorithm” to “How can I make this the best video for my Viewers.”

We’ll talk more about this when we touch upon understanding your audience.

Talk soon!