Unveiling Success: The Best Tools for YouTube SEO and Keyword Research

10 Best YouTube Keyword Tools to Get More Views

Richard Bennett

Mar 27, 2024• Proven solutions

If we asked you to name the world’s biggest search engines, undoubtedly you’d come up with Google, but what would be number two? Bing? Yahoo? The truth might surprise you.

According to figures, the world’s second biggest search engine is actually YouTube. Millions of people are using it everyday to search for videos about fitness, hair, marketing and more. With such a large audience already searching directly on the platform, doesn’t it make sense that when we use YouTube keyword research and SEO should be as important as it is on our website?

Luckily, we can use YouTube keyword tools to analyze YouTube keywords. Here we’re going to take a look at 10 best YouTube keyword tools out there, which can help you identify and optimize for the highest traffic keywords for your videos. By optimizing your videos, you can rank higher, get more views and enjoy a larger audience on YouTube.

• Part 1: 10 Best YouTube Keyword Tools Recommendation
• Part 2: Bonues Tips - Google video result keywords

You May Also Like:
YouTube SEO Complete Guide >>
How to Edit and Optimize YouTube Title, Description, and Tags >>

---

Do you want to edit YouTube video easily? Filmora is a YouTube editor that you should have a try. As a YouTube video editing tool, it is simple to use with dragging and dropping. You can add various video effects, filters and transition to make your video better. Besides, titles and texts are also available to use. After editing, you can directly upload video to YouTube plactform. Now, download it to have a try!

Download Mac Version ](https://tools.techidaily.com/wondershare/filmora/download/ )

---

Part 1: 10 Best YouTube Keyword Tools Recommendation

Before you can get into using any YouTube SEO tool, you’ll need to identify what the best keywords for your videos are. Let’s start by taking a look at the best YouTube keyword tools available.

1. YouTube autocomplete

When you start to search for something on YouTube, you’ll probably notice that YouTube suggests some keywords to finish your search. This is called autocomplete, and it works by suggesting the most popular keywords that start with the letters you’ve typed so far. What it is essentially saying is that those are the most frequently searched for terms that use the words you’ve already typed.

This means it’s a great place to start building your keywords, and a fantastic YouTube keyword tool for your videos. Just start your search for your video (e.g. shoes for…) and see what comes up. In this case, we can see that the most popular keywords are ‘girls’, ‘men’, ‘kids’, ‘summer’ and ‘boys’.

2. Keywordtool.io

Without doubt, this is one of the most powerful YouTube keyword tools out there, ranking hundreds of keywords by popularity. It captures data from YouTube autocomplete and allows you to create lists of keywords from that data. As well as autocompete data, you can also search for questions people are asking, which makes it highly beneficial as a YouTube SEO tool.

The downside to this particular tool is that it’s fairly limited on the free version. Upgrading to Pro Basic will give you almost double the keyword results and will let you compare the volume of searches made for those terms too. However, this will set you back around $68 a year, so it’s going to be something of an investment if you go for it.

3. SEOChat

SEO Chat is an amazing free tool that can generate keyword ideas from Google, Amazon, Bing and YouTube. You can search for keywords from all of those sources or can just search YouTube alone to find your keyword lists. You’ll need a ‘seed’ keyword, such as ‘shoes’, ‘make up’ or ‘marketing’, and then organizes results alphabetically with other letters following your seed keyword.

Simply scrolling through the results is going to give you loads of ideas for keywords and possibly content too. The tool also allows you to further expand your results by selecting a keyword and running ‘part two’ of the process, which expands those phrases even further. Your chosen keywords can be exported from the software, ready for use in your YouTube SEO tool.

4. Gather keywords from your competitor

Why not learn from the best and see what’s already working for your competitors? Finding their high traffic keywords is easy and can save a lot of time and energy. To do this, pick a channel that is around your size, as they’re your nearest competitors. Steer clear of the huge channels, as you’ll find it hard to rank next to them.

Click the videos tab to see their content, and sort them by ‘most popular’ to see the ones which got the most views. Take a look at the title and the description of those videos, and you’ll find a good fistful of proven keywords that you can start using yourself.

That’s not all though. To maximize your competitor research, let’s dig a little deeper into the tags they have used for their videos too. Unfortunately, these are hidden on YouTube, but are easily seen using the page’s HTML. Simply right click on the page and select ‘view source’. Don’t be alarmed at the great stream of HTML that pops up, it’s easy to search using your search function (press ctrl + f on Windows or ⌘ + f on iOS) by typing in ‘keywords’ to the search box. The following terms are the tags used in the video.

If ploughing through HTML sounds somewhat taxing, there is a handy YouTube SEO tool you can use to display the tags on page. It’s called TubeBuddy and is a Chrome extension which you’ll find in the Chrome store for free.

5. Keyword Tool Dominator

It’s got a grand name, but it’s actually really easy to use and a great place to start if you’re new to YouTube keyword research. Pop in your seed keywords and the Dominator will produce a list of relevant keywords related to those terms. You can then select the most useful and download them to your device.

The drawback with this is that you can only perform three searches a day on the free version. Perhaps that’s enough for you to begin with, but if you want to upgrade to the unlimited version, which will also give you search volumes, it’s a one-off fee of $39.99.

6. Ubersuggest

For getting more data on specific keywords, Ubersuggest from the SEO guru that is Neil Patel is one of the best tools out there. As well as showing search volume and competition, you can see other information such as cost per click and the seasonality of the keyword. It’s free to use with no limitations at all, so is well worth checking out.

7. Google trends

We would highly recommend investigating Google Trends as part of your YouTube keyword research, as it is powerful, accurate and, best of all, free! The options let you narrow down the trend results to just YouTube searches, which is great for gaining insights to your search terms. You can narrow down the results to a specific country too, helping you to gain insight into what your target demographic is currently interested in.

8. VidIQ

The keyword tool in VidIQ is one of very few research tools that has a function for just YouTube built in. You can paste in the keywords you want to research, choose the country you wish to target, and it will return all the search volumes and amount of competition, and will score your keywords based on these figures.

On the downside, there is a fairly complicated subscription process to go through if you want to upgrade from the free version. To be honest, the free version is OK for new users, but for in depth analytics you’re going to want to upgrade eventually.

9. Keyword Keg

Keyword Keg is definitely one of the most powerful YouTube keyword research tools out there. It offers lots of data, drawn from a variety of data sources including Wikipedia, Alibaba, Playstore and more. There are filters for country and language and you can drill down into issues like buyer intent and product info. However, as with most free YouTube keyword tools, there is a strict limit on what you can do before you pay. In this case, you only get to see the first five results unless you want to upgrade.

10. Kparser

Kparser is a YouTube keyword tool that you should notice. You can use it to find YouTube keywords free to use. More than finding the best core keywords, this tool can also give you suggestions on long tail keywords in every field. By use this, you don’t need to worry that you can’t the right keywords to use in title, description and tags. You also can selcet country and language when searching a YouTube keyword. For searching more than one keyword, remember to seperate them with coma.

Part 2: Bonus Tips - Google Video Result Keywords

Getting your video ranking highly on YouTube is excellent and will certainly bring you more traffic. But, do you know what would be even better than that? Getting your video ranking on Google as well.

To do this you’ll need to find ‘video result keywords’ in Google, so that yours can be one of the selected videos that sometimes show up in search. Google decides what should and shouldn’t trigger a video result, and usually shows them when a video would make sense, for example when someone asks ‘how to’ or searches for ‘cute’ or ‘funny’ things.

There’s a bit of trial and error involved as there is no YouTube keyword tool to find video result keywords… yet. But you can use Google to search your keywords and see if they are video result keywords. Just type them in, and if a video appears in the listings below, you’ve discovered a video result keyword that is well worth optimizing for.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Mar 27, 2024• Proven solutions

If we asked you to name the world’s biggest search engines, undoubtedly you’d come up with Google, but what would be number two? Bing? Yahoo? The truth might surprise you.

According to figures, the world’s second biggest search engine is actually YouTube. Millions of people are using it everyday to search for videos about fitness, hair, marketing and more. With such a large audience already searching directly on the platform, doesn’t it make sense that when we use YouTube keyword research and SEO should be as important as it is on our website?

Luckily, we can use YouTube keyword tools to analyze YouTube keywords. Here we’re going to take a look at 10 best YouTube keyword tools out there, which can help you identify and optimize for the highest traffic keywords for your videos. By optimizing your videos, you can rank higher, get more views and enjoy a larger audience on YouTube.

• Part 1: 10 Best YouTube Keyword Tools Recommendation
• Part 2: Bonues Tips - Google video result keywords

You May Also Like:
YouTube SEO Complete Guide >>
How to Edit and Optimize YouTube Title, Description, and Tags >>

---

Do you want to edit YouTube video easily? Filmora is a YouTube editor that you should have a try. As a YouTube video editing tool, it is simple to use with dragging and dropping. You can add various video effects, filters and transition to make your video better. Besides, titles and texts are also available to use. After editing, you can directly upload video to YouTube plactform. Now, download it to have a try!

Download Mac Version ](https://tools.techidaily.com/wondershare/filmora/download/ )

---

Part 1: 10 Best YouTube Keyword Tools Recommendation

Before you can get into using any YouTube SEO tool, you’ll need to identify what the best keywords for your videos are. Let’s start by taking a look at the best YouTube keyword tools available.

1. YouTube autocomplete

When you start to search for something on YouTube, you’ll probably notice that YouTube suggests some keywords to finish your search. This is called autocomplete, and it works by suggesting the most popular keywords that start with the letters you’ve typed so far. What it is essentially saying is that those are the most frequently searched for terms that use the words you’ve already typed.

This means it’s a great place to start building your keywords, and a fantastic YouTube keyword tool for your videos. Just start your search for your video (e.g. shoes for…) and see what comes up. In this case, we can see that the most popular keywords are ‘girls’, ‘men’, ‘kids’, ‘summer’ and ‘boys’.

2. Keywordtool.io

Without doubt, this is one of the most powerful YouTube keyword tools out there, ranking hundreds of keywords by popularity. It captures data from YouTube autocomplete and allows you to create lists of keywords from that data. As well as autocompete data, you can also search for questions people are asking, which makes it highly beneficial as a YouTube SEO tool.

The downside to this particular tool is that it’s fairly limited on the free version. Upgrading to Pro Basic will give you almost double the keyword results and will let you compare the volume of searches made for those terms too. However, this will set you back around $68 a year, so it’s going to be something of an investment if you go for it.

3. SEOChat

SEO Chat is an amazing free tool that can generate keyword ideas from Google, Amazon, Bing and YouTube. You can search for keywords from all of those sources or can just search YouTube alone to find your keyword lists. You’ll need a ‘seed’ keyword, such as ‘shoes’, ‘make up’ or ‘marketing’, and then organizes results alphabetically with other letters following your seed keyword.

Simply scrolling through the results is going to give you loads of ideas for keywords and possibly content too. The tool also allows you to further expand your results by selecting a keyword and running ‘part two’ of the process, which expands those phrases even further. Your chosen keywords can be exported from the software, ready for use in your YouTube SEO tool.

4. Gather keywords from your competitor

Why not learn from the best and see what’s already working for your competitors? Finding their high traffic keywords is easy and can save a lot of time and energy. To do this, pick a channel that is around your size, as they’re your nearest competitors. Steer clear of the huge channels, as you’ll find it hard to rank next to them.

Click the videos tab to see their content, and sort them by ‘most popular’ to see the ones which got the most views. Take a look at the title and the description of those videos, and you’ll find a good fistful of proven keywords that you can start using yourself.

That’s not all though. To maximize your competitor research, let’s dig a little deeper into the tags they have used for their videos too. Unfortunately, these are hidden on YouTube, but are easily seen using the page’s HTML. Simply right click on the page and select ‘view source’. Don’t be alarmed at the great stream of HTML that pops up, it’s easy to search using your search function (press ctrl + f on Windows or ⌘ + f on iOS) by typing in ‘keywords’ to the search box. The following terms are the tags used in the video.

If ploughing through HTML sounds somewhat taxing, there is a handy YouTube SEO tool you can use to display the tags on page. It’s called TubeBuddy and is a Chrome extension which you’ll find in the Chrome store for free.

5. Keyword Tool Dominator

It’s got a grand name, but it’s actually really easy to use and a great place to start if you’re new to YouTube keyword research. Pop in your seed keywords and the Dominator will produce a list of relevant keywords related to those terms. You can then select the most useful and download them to your device.

The drawback with this is that you can only perform three searches a day on the free version. Perhaps that’s enough for you to begin with, but if you want to upgrade to the unlimited version, which will also give you search volumes, it’s a one-off fee of $39.99.

6. Ubersuggest

For getting more data on specific keywords, Ubersuggest from the SEO guru that is Neil Patel is one of the best tools out there. As well as showing search volume and competition, you can see other information such as cost per click and the seasonality of the keyword. It’s free to use with no limitations at all, so is well worth checking out.

7. Google trends

We would highly recommend investigating Google Trends as part of your YouTube keyword research, as it is powerful, accurate and, best of all, free! The options let you narrow down the trend results to just YouTube searches, which is great for gaining insights to your search terms. You can narrow down the results to a specific country too, helping you to gain insight into what your target demographic is currently interested in.

8. VidIQ

The keyword tool in VidIQ is one of very few research tools that has a function for just YouTube built in. You can paste in the keywords you want to research, choose the country you wish to target, and it will return all the search volumes and amount of competition, and will score your keywords based on these figures.

On the downside, there is a fairly complicated subscription process to go through if you want to upgrade from the free version. To be honest, the free version is OK for new users, but for in depth analytics you’re going to want to upgrade eventually.

9. Keyword Keg

Keyword Keg is definitely one of the most powerful YouTube keyword research tools out there. It offers lots of data, drawn from a variety of data sources including Wikipedia, Alibaba, Playstore and more. There are filters for country and language and you can drill down into issues like buyer intent and product info. However, as with most free YouTube keyword tools, there is a strict limit on what you can do before you pay. In this case, you only get to see the first five results unless you want to upgrade.

10. Kparser

Kparser is a YouTube keyword tool that you should notice. You can use it to find YouTube keywords free to use. More than finding the best core keywords, this tool can also give you suggestions on long tail keywords in every field. By use this, you don’t need to worry that you can’t the right keywords to use in title, description and tags. You also can selcet country and language when searching a YouTube keyword. For searching more than one keyword, remember to seperate them with coma.

Part 2: Bonus Tips - Google Video Result Keywords

Getting your video ranking highly on YouTube is excellent and will certainly bring you more traffic. But, do you know what would be even better than that? Getting your video ranking on Google as well.

To do this you’ll need to find ‘video result keywords’ in Google, so that yours can be one of the selected videos that sometimes show up in search. Google decides what should and shouldn’t trigger a video result, and usually shows them when a video would make sense, for example when someone asks ‘how to’ or searches for ‘cute’ or ‘funny’ things.

There’s a bit of trial and error involved as there is no YouTube keyword tool to find video result keywords… yet. But you can use Google to search your keywords and see if they are video result keywords. Just type them in, and if a video appears in the listings below, you’ve discovered a video result keyword that is well worth optimizing for.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Mar 27, 2024• Proven solutions

If we asked you to name the world’s biggest search engines, undoubtedly you’d come up with Google, but what would be number two? Bing? Yahoo? The truth might surprise you.

According to figures, the world’s second biggest search engine is actually YouTube. Millions of people are using it everyday to search for videos about fitness, hair, marketing and more. With such a large audience already searching directly on the platform, doesn’t it make sense that when we use YouTube keyword research and SEO should be as important as it is on our website?

Luckily, we can use YouTube keyword tools to analyze YouTube keywords. Here we’re going to take a look at 10 best YouTube keyword tools out there, which can help you identify and optimize for the highest traffic keywords for your videos. By optimizing your videos, you can rank higher, get more views and enjoy a larger audience on YouTube.

• Part 1: 10 Best YouTube Keyword Tools Recommendation
• Part 2: Bonues Tips - Google video result keywords

You May Also Like:
YouTube SEO Complete Guide >>
How to Edit and Optimize YouTube Title, Description, and Tags >>

---

Do you want to edit YouTube video easily? Filmora is a YouTube editor that you should have a try. As a YouTube video editing tool, it is simple to use with dragging and dropping. You can add various video effects, filters and transition to make your video better. Besides, titles and texts are also available to use. After editing, you can directly upload video to YouTube plactform. Now, download it to have a try!

Download Mac Version ](https://tools.techidaily.com/wondershare/filmora/download/ )

---

Part 1: 10 Best YouTube Keyword Tools Recommendation

Before you can get into using any YouTube SEO tool, you’ll need to identify what the best keywords for your videos are. Let’s start by taking a look at the best YouTube keyword tools available.

1. YouTube autocomplete

When you start to search for something on YouTube, you’ll probably notice that YouTube suggests some keywords to finish your search. This is called autocomplete, and it works by suggesting the most popular keywords that start with the letters you’ve typed so far. What it is essentially saying is that those are the most frequently searched for terms that use the words you’ve already typed.

This means it’s a great place to start building your keywords, and a fantastic YouTube keyword tool for your videos. Just start your search for your video (e.g. shoes for…) and see what comes up. In this case, we can see that the most popular keywords are ‘girls’, ‘men’, ‘kids’, ‘summer’ and ‘boys’.

2. Keywordtool.io

Without doubt, this is one of the most powerful YouTube keyword tools out there, ranking hundreds of keywords by popularity. It captures data from YouTube autocomplete and allows you to create lists of keywords from that data. As well as autocompete data, you can also search for questions people are asking, which makes it highly beneficial as a YouTube SEO tool.

The downside to this particular tool is that it’s fairly limited on the free version. Upgrading to Pro Basic will give you almost double the keyword results and will let you compare the volume of searches made for those terms too. However, this will set you back around $68 a year, so it’s going to be something of an investment if you go for it.

3. SEOChat

SEO Chat is an amazing free tool that can generate keyword ideas from Google, Amazon, Bing and YouTube. You can search for keywords from all of those sources or can just search YouTube alone to find your keyword lists. You’ll need a ‘seed’ keyword, such as ‘shoes’, ‘make up’ or ‘marketing’, and then organizes results alphabetically with other letters following your seed keyword.

Simply scrolling through the results is going to give you loads of ideas for keywords and possibly content too. The tool also allows you to further expand your results by selecting a keyword and running ‘part two’ of the process, which expands those phrases even further. Your chosen keywords can be exported from the software, ready for use in your YouTube SEO tool.

4. Gather keywords from your competitor

Why not learn from the best and see what’s already working for your competitors? Finding their high traffic keywords is easy and can save a lot of time and energy. To do this, pick a channel that is around your size, as they’re your nearest competitors. Steer clear of the huge channels, as you’ll find it hard to rank next to them.

Click the videos tab to see their content, and sort them by ‘most popular’ to see the ones which got the most views. Take a look at the title and the description of those videos, and you’ll find a good fistful of proven keywords that you can start using yourself.

That’s not all though. To maximize your competitor research, let’s dig a little deeper into the tags they have used for their videos too. Unfortunately, these are hidden on YouTube, but are easily seen using the page’s HTML. Simply right click on the page and select ‘view source’. Don’t be alarmed at the great stream of HTML that pops up, it’s easy to search using your search function (press ctrl + f on Windows or ⌘ + f on iOS) by typing in ‘keywords’ to the search box. The following terms are the tags used in the video.

If ploughing through HTML sounds somewhat taxing, there is a handy YouTube SEO tool you can use to display the tags on page. It’s called TubeBuddy and is a Chrome extension which you’ll find in the Chrome store for free.

5. Keyword Tool Dominator

It’s got a grand name, but it’s actually really easy to use and a great place to start if you’re new to YouTube keyword research. Pop in your seed keywords and the Dominator will produce a list of relevant keywords related to those terms. You can then select the most useful and download them to your device.

The drawback with this is that you can only perform three searches a day on the free version. Perhaps that’s enough for you to begin with, but if you want to upgrade to the unlimited version, which will also give you search volumes, it’s a one-off fee of $39.99.

6. Ubersuggest

For getting more data on specific keywords, Ubersuggest from the SEO guru that is Neil Patel is one of the best tools out there. As well as showing search volume and competition, you can see other information such as cost per click and the seasonality of the keyword. It’s free to use with no limitations at all, so is well worth checking out.

7. Google trends

We would highly recommend investigating Google Trends as part of your YouTube keyword research, as it is powerful, accurate and, best of all, free! The options let you narrow down the trend results to just YouTube searches, which is great for gaining insights to your search terms. You can narrow down the results to a specific country too, helping you to gain insight into what your target demographic is currently interested in.

8. VidIQ

The keyword tool in VidIQ is one of very few research tools that has a function for just YouTube built in. You can paste in the keywords you want to research, choose the country you wish to target, and it will return all the search volumes and amount of competition, and will score your keywords based on these figures.

On the downside, there is a fairly complicated subscription process to go through if you want to upgrade from the free version. To be honest, the free version is OK for new users, but for in depth analytics you’re going to want to upgrade eventually.

9. Keyword Keg

Keyword Keg is definitely one of the most powerful YouTube keyword research tools out there. It offers lots of data, drawn from a variety of data sources including Wikipedia, Alibaba, Playstore and more. There are filters for country and language and you can drill down into issues like buyer intent and product info. However, as with most free YouTube keyword tools, there is a strict limit on what you can do before you pay. In this case, you only get to see the first five results unless you want to upgrade.

10. Kparser

Kparser is a YouTube keyword tool that you should notice. You can use it to find YouTube keywords free to use. More than finding the best core keywords, this tool can also give you suggestions on long tail keywords in every field. By use this, you don’t need to worry that you can’t the right keywords to use in title, description and tags. You also can selcet country and language when searching a YouTube keyword. For searching more than one keyword, remember to seperate them with coma.

Part 2: Bonus Tips - Google Video Result Keywords

Getting your video ranking highly on YouTube is excellent and will certainly bring you more traffic. But, do you know what would be even better than that? Getting your video ranking on Google as well.

To do this you’ll need to find ‘video result keywords’ in Google, so that yours can be one of the selected videos that sometimes show up in search. Google decides what should and shouldn’t trigger a video result, and usually shows them when a video would make sense, for example when someone asks ‘how to’ or searches for ‘cute’ or ‘funny’ things.

There’s a bit of trial and error involved as there is no YouTube keyword tool to find video result keywords… yet. But you can use Google to search your keywords and see if they are video result keywords. Just type them in, and if a video appears in the listings below, you’ve discovered a video result keyword that is well worth optimizing for.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Mar 27, 2024• Proven solutions

If we asked you to name the world’s biggest search engines, undoubtedly you’d come up with Google, but what would be number two? Bing? Yahoo? The truth might surprise you.

According to figures, the world’s second biggest search engine is actually YouTube. Millions of people are using it everyday to search for videos about fitness, hair, marketing and more. With such a large audience already searching directly on the platform, doesn’t it make sense that when we use YouTube keyword research and SEO should be as important as it is on our website?

Luckily, we can use YouTube keyword tools to analyze YouTube keywords. Here we’re going to take a look at 10 best YouTube keyword tools out there, which can help you identify and optimize for the highest traffic keywords for your videos. By optimizing your videos, you can rank higher, get more views and enjoy a larger audience on YouTube.

• Part 1: 10 Best YouTube Keyword Tools Recommendation
• Part 2: Bonues Tips - Google video result keywords

You May Also Like:
YouTube SEO Complete Guide >>
How to Edit and Optimize YouTube Title, Description, and Tags >>

---

Do you want to edit YouTube video easily? Filmora is a YouTube editor that you should have a try. As a YouTube video editing tool, it is simple to use with dragging and dropping. You can add various video effects, filters and transition to make your video better. Besides, titles and texts are also available to use. After editing, you can directly upload video to YouTube plactform. Now, download it to have a try!

Download Mac Version ](https://tools.techidaily.com/wondershare/filmora/download/ )

---

Part 1: 10 Best YouTube Keyword Tools Recommendation

Before you can get into using any YouTube SEO tool, you’ll need to identify what the best keywords for your videos are. Let’s start by taking a look at the best YouTube keyword tools available.

1. YouTube autocomplete

When you start to search for something on YouTube, you’ll probably notice that YouTube suggests some keywords to finish your search. This is called autocomplete, and it works by suggesting the most popular keywords that start with the letters you’ve typed so far. What it is essentially saying is that those are the most frequently searched for terms that use the words you’ve already typed.

This means it’s a great place to start building your keywords, and a fantastic YouTube keyword tool for your videos. Just start your search for your video (e.g. shoes for…) and see what comes up. In this case, we can see that the most popular keywords are ‘girls’, ‘men’, ‘kids’, ‘summer’ and ‘boys’.

2. Keywordtool.io

Without doubt, this is one of the most powerful YouTube keyword tools out there, ranking hundreds of keywords by popularity. It captures data from YouTube autocomplete and allows you to create lists of keywords from that data. As well as autocompete data, you can also search for questions people are asking, which makes it highly beneficial as a YouTube SEO tool.

The downside to this particular tool is that it’s fairly limited on the free version. Upgrading to Pro Basic will give you almost double the keyword results and will let you compare the volume of searches made for those terms too. However, this will set you back around $68 a year, so it’s going to be something of an investment if you go for it.

3. SEOChat

SEO Chat is an amazing free tool that can generate keyword ideas from Google, Amazon, Bing and YouTube. You can search for keywords from all of those sources or can just search YouTube alone to find your keyword lists. You’ll need a ‘seed’ keyword, such as ‘shoes’, ‘make up’ or ‘marketing’, and then organizes results alphabetically with other letters following your seed keyword.

Simply scrolling through the results is going to give you loads of ideas for keywords and possibly content too. The tool also allows you to further expand your results by selecting a keyword and running ‘part two’ of the process, which expands those phrases even further. Your chosen keywords can be exported from the software, ready for use in your YouTube SEO tool.

4. Gather keywords from your competitor

Why not learn from the best and see what’s already working for your competitors? Finding their high traffic keywords is easy and can save a lot of time and energy. To do this, pick a channel that is around your size, as they’re your nearest competitors. Steer clear of the huge channels, as you’ll find it hard to rank next to them.

Click the videos tab to see their content, and sort them by ‘most popular’ to see the ones which got the most views. Take a look at the title and the description of those videos, and you’ll find a good fistful of proven keywords that you can start using yourself.

That’s not all though. To maximize your competitor research, let’s dig a little deeper into the tags they have used for their videos too. Unfortunately, these are hidden on YouTube, but are easily seen using the page’s HTML. Simply right click on the page and select ‘view source’. Don’t be alarmed at the great stream of HTML that pops up, it’s easy to search using your search function (press ctrl + f on Windows or ⌘ + f on iOS) by typing in ‘keywords’ to the search box. The following terms are the tags used in the video.

If ploughing through HTML sounds somewhat taxing, there is a handy YouTube SEO tool you can use to display the tags on page. It’s called TubeBuddy and is a Chrome extension which you’ll find in the Chrome store for free.

5. Keyword Tool Dominator

It’s got a grand name, but it’s actually really easy to use and a great place to start if you’re new to YouTube keyword research. Pop in your seed keywords and the Dominator will produce a list of relevant keywords related to those terms. You can then select the most useful and download them to your device.

The drawback with this is that you can only perform three searches a day on the free version. Perhaps that’s enough for you to begin with, but if you want to upgrade to the unlimited version, which will also give you search volumes, it’s a one-off fee of $39.99.

6. Ubersuggest

For getting more data on specific keywords, Ubersuggest from the SEO guru that is Neil Patel is one of the best tools out there. As well as showing search volume and competition, you can see other information such as cost per click and the seasonality of the keyword. It’s free to use with no limitations at all, so is well worth checking out.

7. Google trends

We would highly recommend investigating Google Trends as part of your YouTube keyword research, as it is powerful, accurate and, best of all, free! The options let you narrow down the trend results to just YouTube searches, which is great for gaining insights to your search terms. You can narrow down the results to a specific country too, helping you to gain insight into what your target demographic is currently interested in.

8. VidIQ

The keyword tool in VidIQ is one of very few research tools that has a function for just YouTube built in. You can paste in the keywords you want to research, choose the country you wish to target, and it will return all the search volumes and amount of competition, and will score your keywords based on these figures.

On the downside, there is a fairly complicated subscription process to go through if you want to upgrade from the free version. To be honest, the free version is OK for new users, but for in depth analytics you’re going to want to upgrade eventually.

9. Keyword Keg

Keyword Keg is definitely one of the most powerful YouTube keyword research tools out there. It offers lots of data, drawn from a variety of data sources including Wikipedia, Alibaba, Playstore and more. There are filters for country and language and you can drill down into issues like buyer intent and product info. However, as with most free YouTube keyword tools, there is a strict limit on what you can do before you pay. In this case, you only get to see the first five results unless you want to upgrade.

10. Kparser

Kparser is a YouTube keyword tool that you should notice. You can use it to find YouTube keywords free to use. More than finding the best core keywords, this tool can also give you suggestions on long tail keywords in every field. By use this, you don’t need to worry that you can’t the right keywords to use in title, description and tags. You also can selcet country and language when searching a YouTube keyword. For searching more than one keyword, remember to seperate them with coma.

Part 2: Bonus Tips - Google Video Result Keywords

Getting your video ranking highly on YouTube is excellent and will certainly bring you more traffic. But, do you know what would be even better than that? Getting your video ranking on Google as well.

To do this you’ll need to find ‘video result keywords’ in Google, so that yours can be one of the selected videos that sometimes show up in search. Google decides what should and shouldn’t trigger a video result, and usually shows them when a video would make sense, for example when someone asks ‘how to’ or searches for ‘cute’ or ‘funny’ things.

There’s a bit of trial and error involved as there is no YouTube keyword tool to find video result keywords… yet. But you can use Google to search your keywords and see if they are video result keywords. Just type them in, and if a video appears in the listings below, you’ve discovered a video result keyword that is well worth optimizing for.

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Beyond Audience Counting: The Intricacies of YouTube’s Metrics

How Does YouTube Count Views? It’s Not as Simple as You Think

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

0

How does YouTube count views? It’s not as simple as the number of clicks your video gets. If someone sits and refreshes your video over and over without letting it play for any significant time, those refreshes won’t be recorded as views. There is a lot more that goes into the calculation.

1. Not Everyone Who Clicks Adds to Your View Count
2. How Does YouTube Count Views
3. How Does YouTube’s View Count Algorithm Work?
4. Account Tracking Factors - Some Viewers Don’t Count
5. The Skip & Skim
6. Frozen YouTube View Counts
7. The 301 Mark

Best YouTube Video Editor - Filmora

After you have created your YouTube channel, do you want to edit videos and upload your first video? Here we recommend using Filmora to easily edit YouTube videos.

You can use Filmora to make YouTube videos with built-in royalty-free audio. Filmora also can help you make YouTube intros. It includes more than 500 templates, transitions, effects, and text resources.

1. Not Everyone Who Clicks Adds to Your View Count

YouTube doesn’t provide a clear definition of what counts as a view, but we know that someone clicks on your video, and clicking right away doesn’t count. That’s how we know that watch time is a factor. Some studies conclude that a full 30 seconds need to be viewed to register as one view, but there is no way to know for sure.

2. How Does YouTube Count Views?

YouTube wants to be sure that views are coming from humans and not bots. So, during the first couple of hours after you publish a video, YouTube seems to be stricter about what they count. The views which are counted are the ones that YouTube believes to be legitimate. Sometimes, it ends up skipping legitimate views for the sake of discretion.

Once this window of time passes, it is likely that you will see the view counter start to update a lot more frequently. The counter could still revert to updating slower and more hesitantly, though, if YouTube’s algorithm thinks it’s detecting something fishy.

At times, your view count can even be frozen temporarily until the algorithm can validate the views you are receiving. This is done to ensure a fair and positive experience for everyone who creates content. View counts can be adjusted by the algorithm in either direction.

You May Also Like:
5 Tips To Get More Views With YouTube Optimization [Free Checklist] >>

3. How Does YouTube’s View Count Algorithm Work?

Termed by many as one of the most boggling algorithms of all time, it is really hard to decode the complete dynamics of the YouTube view count algorithm.

There are some tests you can run yourself to try to unpack it.

If you upload a video and then set it as unlisted it won’t get any public views so you can experiment by doing things like watching for different lengths of time and seeing what gets counted.

You’ll have to use a computer in a different location and make sure the account is not the same as the one you used to upload the video. Now, you need to watch the video for roughly 15 seconds. The key here is to keep it less than 30 seconds. You will see that the view did not add to the count. If you repeat this process on multiple computers at varying locations and with different accounts and you are likely to find the same result.

However, if you watch it for 30 seconds or longer it is likely that the count will go up.

We are adding ‘likely’ here because, despite this 30-second rule which has been decoded, there are other factors that might contribute to whether a view is counted as well as other automated scanning techniques at play.

Try to watch the same video numerous times in a single day. You will find that the count will add up at first, but after some time it will stop. YouTube knows that a lot of times people replay some videos over and over when they really enjoy them, and so they want to factor replays into their algorithm because they suggest quality. However, to avoid spam views, the counter will stop after a certain point.

4. Account Tracking Factors - Some Viewers Don’t Count

Something else that can affect whether a view is counted is the behavior of the account which watches it prior to landing on your video’s watch page. Sometimes, YouTube might feel that there is an increased chance a particular account is actually a bot, and then views from that account might not be added.

One way that YouTube might flag an account as a potential bot is if it is jumping between videos directly without navigating through recommendations, the search engine, or the account’s subscriber feed (how are they getting between these watch page URLs if they aren’t clicking on anything YouTube can record?). To add to it, if the viewer is watching each of the videos for almost 30 seconds exactly (or less) there is an increased probability that it is not a human but a bot (or a human watching the bare minimum as part of a view exchange program).

Any bot-like action will result in an account’s views do not be added to your view count.

5. The Skip & Skim

It’s not uncommon for viewers to watch a video for say five seconds, skip forwards a bit and watch for another ten seconds as they look for a specific part. It is hard to say whether skipping through a video, but watching a scattered 30 seconds, would count as a view or not.

6. Frozen YouTube View Counts

Sometimes YouTube will freeze a view count in order to check that it is accurate. When the count is unfrozen, the count may jump up as views are validated or it can go down if YouTube detects a problem.

You can use YouTube’s analytics reports to monitor an estimate of your potential views, but there is no assurance that this data will completely match your official view count.

7. The 301 Mark

You may have seen a lot of videos that have a stagnant count of 301 views. The algorithm behind YouTube’s view counting system believes that any video which has fetched higher than 300 views has the ability to impact people’s perception of quality on YouTube. They do not want the homepage to be crowded with artificially popular videos.

This is why view counts are often frozen at 301. The employees at YouTube then manually verify whether the views obtained so far are legitimate or fake. Once the employees are sure that the views are legit, the counter is unfrozen and you will see an upward swing.

During the period when the view count is frozen every legitimate view is still counted, just not added immediately. Once the YouTube team is sure that your videos are not getting fake traffic, your view count will be updated to include views that were registered during the frozen phase. However, YouTube says it won’t flag videos at 301 views anymore.

Conclusion

In short, we know YouTube expects a viewer to watch a video for around 30 seconds before it counts a view, that views from suspicious accounts are not counted, and that YouTube can decide to freeze your view count while they review your views. They are protecting the site from becoming saturated with videos that only look popular because of bots. Ultimately, ‘how does YouTube count views’ isn’t a question anyone but YouTube can answer for sure, but we do know it isn’t as simple as ‘a view is someone clicking on your video’.

If you want to engage your audience with cool effects and Filmora is the best choice to make a split-screen and green screen video for YouTubers. Download it now to have a try!

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

0

How does YouTube count views? It’s not as simple as the number of clicks your video gets. If someone sits and refreshes your video over and over without letting it play for any significant time, those refreshes won’t be recorded as views. There is a lot more that goes into the calculation.

1. Not Everyone Who Clicks Adds to Your View Count
2. How Does YouTube Count Views
3. How Does YouTube’s View Count Algorithm Work?
4. Account Tracking Factors - Some Viewers Don’t Count
5. The Skip & Skim
6. Frozen YouTube View Counts
7. The 301 Mark

Best YouTube Video Editor - Filmora

After you have created your YouTube channel, do you want to edit videos and upload your first video? Here we recommend using Filmora to easily edit YouTube videos.

You can use Filmora to make YouTube videos with built-in royalty-free audio. Filmora also can help you make YouTube intros. It includes more than 500 templates, transitions, effects, and text resources.

1. Not Everyone Who Clicks Adds to Your View Count

YouTube doesn’t provide a clear definition of what counts as a view, but we know that someone clicks on your video, and clicking right away doesn’t count. That’s how we know that watch time is a factor. Some studies conclude that a full 30 seconds need to be viewed to register as one view, but there is no way to know for sure.

2. How Does YouTube Count Views?

YouTube wants to be sure that views are coming from humans and not bots. So, during the first couple of hours after you publish a video, YouTube seems to be stricter about what they count. The views which are counted are the ones that YouTube believes to be legitimate. Sometimes, it ends up skipping legitimate views for the sake of discretion.

Once this window of time passes, it is likely that you will see the view counter start to update a lot more frequently. The counter could still revert to updating slower and more hesitantly, though, if YouTube’s algorithm thinks it’s detecting something fishy.

At times, your view count can even be frozen temporarily until the algorithm can validate the views you are receiving. This is done to ensure a fair and positive experience for everyone who creates content. View counts can be adjusted by the algorithm in either direction.

You May Also Like:
5 Tips To Get More Views With YouTube Optimization [Free Checklist] >>

3. How Does YouTube’s View Count Algorithm Work?

Termed by many as one of the most boggling algorithms of all time, it is really hard to decode the complete dynamics of the YouTube view count algorithm.

There are some tests you can run yourself to try to unpack it.

If you upload a video and then set it as unlisted it won’t get any public views so you can experiment by doing things like watching for different lengths of time and seeing what gets counted.

You’ll have to use a computer in a different location and make sure the account is not the same as the one you used to upload the video. Now, you need to watch the video for roughly 15 seconds. The key here is to keep it less than 30 seconds. You will see that the view did not add to the count. If you repeat this process on multiple computers at varying locations and with different accounts and you are likely to find the same result.

However, if you watch it for 30 seconds or longer it is likely that the count will go up.

We are adding ‘likely’ here because, despite this 30-second rule which has been decoded, there are other factors that might contribute to whether a view is counted as well as other automated scanning techniques at play.

Try to watch the same video numerous times in a single day. You will find that the count will add up at first, but after some time it will stop. YouTube knows that a lot of times people replay some videos over and over when they really enjoy them, and so they want to factor replays into their algorithm because they suggest quality. However, to avoid spam views, the counter will stop after a certain point.

4. Account Tracking Factors - Some Viewers Don’t Count

Something else that can affect whether a view is counted is the behavior of the account which watches it prior to landing on your video’s watch page. Sometimes, YouTube might feel that there is an increased chance a particular account is actually a bot, and then views from that account might not be added.

One way that YouTube might flag an account as a potential bot is if it is jumping between videos directly without navigating through recommendations, the search engine, or the account’s subscriber feed (how are they getting between these watch page URLs if they aren’t clicking on anything YouTube can record?). To add to it, if the viewer is watching each of the videos for almost 30 seconds exactly (or less) there is an increased probability that it is not a human but a bot (or a human watching the bare minimum as part of a view exchange program).

Any bot-like action will result in an account’s views do not be added to your view count.

5. The Skip & Skim

It’s not uncommon for viewers to watch a video for say five seconds, skip forwards a bit and watch for another ten seconds as they look for a specific part. It is hard to say whether skipping through a video, but watching a scattered 30 seconds, would count as a view or not.

6. Frozen YouTube View Counts

Sometimes YouTube will freeze a view count in order to check that it is accurate. When the count is unfrozen, the count may jump up as views are validated or it can go down if YouTube detects a problem.

You can use YouTube’s analytics reports to monitor an estimate of your potential views, but there is no assurance that this data will completely match your official view count.

7. The 301 Mark

You may have seen a lot of videos that have a stagnant count of 301 views. The algorithm behind YouTube’s view counting system believes that any video which has fetched higher than 300 views has the ability to impact people’s perception of quality on YouTube. They do not want the homepage to be crowded with artificially popular videos.

This is why view counts are often frozen at 301. The employees at YouTube then manually verify whether the views obtained so far are legitimate or fake. Once the employees are sure that the views are legit, the counter is unfrozen and you will see an upward swing.

During the period when the view count is frozen every legitimate view is still counted, just not added immediately. Once the YouTube team is sure that your videos are not getting fake traffic, your view count will be updated to include views that were registered during the frozen phase. However, YouTube says it won’t flag videos at 301 views anymore.

Conclusion

In short, we know YouTube expects a viewer to watch a video for around 30 seconds before it counts a view, that views from suspicious accounts are not counted, and that YouTube can decide to freeze your view count while they review your views. They are protecting the site from becoming saturated with videos that only look popular because of bots. Ultimately, ‘how does YouTube count views’ isn’t a question anyone but YouTube can answer for sure, but we do know it isn’t as simple as ‘a view is someone clicking on your video’.

If you want to engage your audience with cool effects and Filmora is the best choice to make a split-screen and green screen video for YouTubers. Download it now to have a try!

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

0

How does YouTube count views? It’s not as simple as the number of clicks your video gets. If someone sits and refreshes your video over and over without letting it play for any significant time, those refreshes won’t be recorded as views. There is a lot more that goes into the calculation.

1. Not Everyone Who Clicks Adds to Your View Count
2. How Does YouTube Count Views
3. How Does YouTube’s View Count Algorithm Work?
4. Account Tracking Factors - Some Viewers Don’t Count
5. The Skip & Skim
6. Frozen YouTube View Counts
7. The 301 Mark

Best YouTube Video Editor - Filmora

After you have created your YouTube channel, do you want to edit videos and upload your first video? Here we recommend using Filmora to easily edit YouTube videos.

You can use Filmora to make YouTube videos with built-in royalty-free audio. Filmora also can help you make YouTube intros. It includes more than 500 templates, transitions, effects, and text resources.

1. Not Everyone Who Clicks Adds to Your View Count

YouTube doesn’t provide a clear definition of what counts as a view, but we know that someone clicks on your video, and clicking right away doesn’t count. That’s how we know that watch time is a factor. Some studies conclude that a full 30 seconds need to be viewed to register as one view, but there is no way to know for sure.

2. How Does YouTube Count Views?

YouTube wants to be sure that views are coming from humans and not bots. So, during the first couple of hours after you publish a video, YouTube seems to be stricter about what they count. The views which are counted are the ones that YouTube believes to be legitimate. Sometimes, it ends up skipping legitimate views for the sake of discretion.

Once this window of time passes, it is likely that you will see the view counter start to update a lot more frequently. The counter could still revert to updating slower and more hesitantly, though, if YouTube’s algorithm thinks it’s detecting something fishy.

At times, your view count can even be frozen temporarily until the algorithm can validate the views you are receiving. This is done to ensure a fair and positive experience for everyone who creates content. View counts can be adjusted by the algorithm in either direction.

You May Also Like:
5 Tips To Get More Views With YouTube Optimization [Free Checklist] >>

3. How Does YouTube’s View Count Algorithm Work?

Termed by many as one of the most boggling algorithms of all time, it is really hard to decode the complete dynamics of the YouTube view count algorithm.

There are some tests you can run yourself to try to unpack it.

If you upload a video and then set it as unlisted it won’t get any public views so you can experiment by doing things like watching for different lengths of time and seeing what gets counted.

You’ll have to use a computer in a different location and make sure the account is not the same as the one you used to upload the video. Now, you need to watch the video for roughly 15 seconds. The key here is to keep it less than 30 seconds. You will see that the view did not add to the count. If you repeat this process on multiple computers at varying locations and with different accounts and you are likely to find the same result.

However, if you watch it for 30 seconds or longer it is likely that the count will go up.

We are adding ‘likely’ here because, despite this 30-second rule which has been decoded, there are other factors that might contribute to whether a view is counted as well as other automated scanning techniques at play.

Try to watch the same video numerous times in a single day. You will find that the count will add up at first, but after some time it will stop. YouTube knows that a lot of times people replay some videos over and over when they really enjoy them, and so they want to factor replays into their algorithm because they suggest quality. However, to avoid spam views, the counter will stop after a certain point.

4. Account Tracking Factors - Some Viewers Don’t Count

Something else that can affect whether a view is counted is the behavior of the account which watches it prior to landing on your video’s watch page. Sometimes, YouTube might feel that there is an increased chance a particular account is actually a bot, and then views from that account might not be added.

One way that YouTube might flag an account as a potential bot is if it is jumping between videos directly without navigating through recommendations, the search engine, or the account’s subscriber feed (how are they getting between these watch page URLs if they aren’t clicking on anything YouTube can record?). To add to it, if the viewer is watching each of the videos for almost 30 seconds exactly (or less) there is an increased probability that it is not a human but a bot (or a human watching the bare minimum as part of a view exchange program).

Any bot-like action will result in an account’s views do not be added to your view count.

5. The Skip & Skim

It’s not uncommon for viewers to watch a video for say five seconds, skip forwards a bit and watch for another ten seconds as they look for a specific part. It is hard to say whether skipping through a video, but watching a scattered 30 seconds, would count as a view or not.

6. Frozen YouTube View Counts

Sometimes YouTube will freeze a view count in order to check that it is accurate. When the count is unfrozen, the count may jump up as views are validated or it can go down if YouTube detects a problem.

You can use YouTube’s analytics reports to monitor an estimate of your potential views, but there is no assurance that this data will completely match your official view count.

7. The 301 Mark

You may have seen a lot of videos that have a stagnant count of 301 views. The algorithm behind YouTube’s view counting system believes that any video which has fetched higher than 300 views has the ability to impact people’s perception of quality on YouTube. They do not want the homepage to be crowded with artificially popular videos.

This is why view counts are often frozen at 301. The employees at YouTube then manually verify whether the views obtained so far are legitimate or fake. Once the employees are sure that the views are legit, the counter is unfrozen and you will see an upward swing.

During the period when the view count is frozen every legitimate view is still counted, just not added immediately. Once the YouTube team is sure that your videos are not getting fake traffic, your view count will be updated to include views that were registered during the frozen phase. However, YouTube says it won’t flag videos at 301 views anymore.

Conclusion

In short, we know YouTube expects a viewer to watch a video for around 30 seconds before it counts a view, that views from suspicious accounts are not counted, and that YouTube can decide to freeze your view count while they review your views. They are protecting the site from becoming saturated with videos that only look popular because of bots. Ultimately, ‘how does YouTube count views’ isn’t a question anyone but YouTube can answer for sure, but we do know it isn’t as simple as ‘a view is someone clicking on your video’.

If you want to engage your audience with cool effects and Filmora is the best choice to make a split-screen and green screen video for YouTubers. Download it now to have a try!

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett

Oct 26, 2023• Proven solutions

0

How does YouTube count views? It’s not as simple as the number of clicks your video gets. If someone sits and refreshes your video over and over without letting it play for any significant time, those refreshes won’t be recorded as views. There is a lot more that goes into the calculation.

1. Not Everyone Who Clicks Adds to Your View Count
2. How Does YouTube Count Views
3. How Does YouTube’s View Count Algorithm Work?
4. Account Tracking Factors - Some Viewers Don’t Count
5. The Skip & Skim
6. Frozen YouTube View Counts
7. The 301 Mark

Best YouTube Video Editor - Filmora

After you have created your YouTube channel, do you want to edit videos and upload your first video? Here we recommend using Filmora to easily edit YouTube videos.

You can use Filmora to make YouTube videos with built-in royalty-free audio. Filmora also can help you make YouTube intros. It includes more than 500 templates, transitions, effects, and text resources.

1. Not Everyone Who Clicks Adds to Your View Count

YouTube doesn’t provide a clear definition of what counts as a view, but we know that someone clicks on your video, and clicking right away doesn’t count. That’s how we know that watch time is a factor. Some studies conclude that a full 30 seconds need to be viewed to register as one view, but there is no way to know for sure.

2. How Does YouTube Count Views?

YouTube wants to be sure that views are coming from humans and not bots. So, during the first couple of hours after you publish a video, YouTube seems to be stricter about what they count. The views which are counted are the ones that YouTube believes to be legitimate. Sometimes, it ends up skipping legitimate views for the sake of discretion.

Once this window of time passes, it is likely that you will see the view counter start to update a lot more frequently. The counter could still revert to updating slower and more hesitantly, though, if YouTube’s algorithm thinks it’s detecting something fishy.

At times, your view count can even be frozen temporarily until the algorithm can validate the views you are receiving. This is done to ensure a fair and positive experience for everyone who creates content. View counts can be adjusted by the algorithm in either direction.

You May Also Like:
5 Tips To Get More Views With YouTube Optimization [Free Checklist] >>

3. How Does YouTube’s View Count Algorithm Work?

Termed by many as one of the most boggling algorithms of all time, it is really hard to decode the complete dynamics of the YouTube view count algorithm.

There are some tests you can run yourself to try to unpack it.

If you upload a video and then set it as unlisted it won’t get any public views so you can experiment by doing things like watching for different lengths of time and seeing what gets counted.

You’ll have to use a computer in a different location and make sure the account is not the same as the one you used to upload the video. Now, you need to watch the video for roughly 15 seconds. The key here is to keep it less than 30 seconds. You will see that the view did not add to the count. If you repeat this process on multiple computers at varying locations and with different accounts and you are likely to find the same result.

However, if you watch it for 30 seconds or longer it is likely that the count will go up.

We are adding ‘likely’ here because, despite this 30-second rule which has been decoded, there are other factors that might contribute to whether a view is counted as well as other automated scanning techniques at play.

Try to watch the same video numerous times in a single day. You will find that the count will add up at first, but after some time it will stop. YouTube knows that a lot of times people replay some videos over and over when they really enjoy them, and so they want to factor replays into their algorithm because they suggest quality. However, to avoid spam views, the counter will stop after a certain point.

4. Account Tracking Factors - Some Viewers Don’t Count

Something else that can affect whether a view is counted is the behavior of the account which watches it prior to landing on your video’s watch page. Sometimes, YouTube might feel that there is an increased chance a particular account is actually a bot, and then views from that account might not be added.

One way that YouTube might flag an account as a potential bot is if it is jumping between videos directly without navigating through recommendations, the search engine, or the account’s subscriber feed (how are they getting between these watch page URLs if they aren’t clicking on anything YouTube can record?). To add to it, if the viewer is watching each of the videos for almost 30 seconds exactly (or less) there is an increased probability that it is not a human but a bot (or a human watching the bare minimum as part of a view exchange program).

Any bot-like action will result in an account’s views do not be added to your view count.

5. The Skip & Skim

It’s not uncommon for viewers to watch a video for say five seconds, skip forwards a bit and watch for another ten seconds as they look for a specific part. It is hard to say whether skipping through a video, but watching a scattered 30 seconds, would count as a view or not.

6. Frozen YouTube View Counts

Sometimes YouTube will freeze a view count in order to check that it is accurate. When the count is unfrozen, the count may jump up as views are validated or it can go down if YouTube detects a problem.

You can use YouTube’s analytics reports to monitor an estimate of your potential views, but there is no assurance that this data will completely match your official view count.

7. The 301 Mark

You may have seen a lot of videos that have a stagnant count of 301 views. The algorithm behind YouTube’s view counting system believes that any video which has fetched higher than 300 views has the ability to impact people’s perception of quality on YouTube. They do not want the homepage to be crowded with artificially popular videos.

This is why view counts are often frozen at 301. The employees at YouTube then manually verify whether the views obtained so far are legitimate or fake. Once the employees are sure that the views are legit, the counter is unfrozen and you will see an upward swing.

During the period when the view count is frozen every legitimate view is still counted, just not added immediately. Once the YouTube team is sure that your videos are not getting fake traffic, your view count will be updated to include views that were registered during the frozen phase. However, YouTube says it won’t flag videos at 301 views anymore.

Conclusion

In short, we know YouTube expects a viewer to watch a video for around 30 seconds before it counts a view, that views from suspicious accounts are not counted, and that YouTube can decide to freeze your view count while they review your views. They are protecting the site from becoming saturated with videos that only look popular because of bots. Ultimately, ‘how does YouTube count views’ isn’t a question anyone but YouTube can answer for sure, but we do know it isn’t as simple as ‘a view is someone clicking on your video’.

If you want to engage your audience with cool effects and Filmora is the best choice to make a split-screen and green screen video for YouTubers. Download it now to have a try!

Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett is a writer and a lover of all things video.

Follow @Richard Bennett

Also read: