Transcription
So, a few days ago I received this comment on one of my videos. It's 1,200 words long. I think that's a record for my channel.
First of all, thank you to the commenter for the effort and taking the time to write such a thought-provoking comment. And also, thank you for being a subscriber.
Now, for context, this comment was posted on my latest video titled, "Your videos are getting better, your views are getting worse. Here's why." So, in that video, I draw on my TV experience to explain how higher production value, more polish, that kind of thing, can sometimes backfire on you if you don't use it right. And it can actually turn viewers away and cause your views to go down.
So, the commenter respectfully took issue with my take. They started by saying, "I really wish I could agree with you on this. While your video is very good, it really is the algorithm change from 2025 that is really causing this issue more than anything. I've spent hours with Creator Studio AI and Creator Support verifying this."
It's a terrifying but all too familiar thought, right? That the YouTube game is rigged. That the unwritten contract with our audience is gone. Because if that's the case, we're in for some hard times.
Now, this video is not meant as a clapback or anything like that. This comment lays out a number of claims that I want to explore because I think they're important to all creators. So, we're going to open up my actual studio analytics. I don't think I've ever done this in a video, to see if this new discovery model mentioned in the comment actually exists or if my metrics tell a different story. Let's jump in.
All right, let's just dig into this second paragraph of the comment because it kind of sums up the entire claim. YouTube has gone to a discovery model for its algo. Every new video you upload is tested within the first 24 to 48 hours. It is presented seeded to a group of interest adjacent viewers. What this means is that if your niche genre is say gardening, your content will be presented in a shotgun method of discovery to a wide market of viewer interests who may not care about gardening. If they don't click, YouTube sees that as a bad video signal. Here's the data point I want to test. The worst part is less than 1% of this test group will be your subscribers.
Okay, I wanted to see if that was in fact the case at least in terms of my analytics. So, here we are in the analytics page for my latest video. This video actually is the one that got this comment and it is titled Your videos are getting better, your views are getting worse, here's why.
Okay, so let's dig into this. I'm going to go into advanced mode here. And what I'm looking for here is the total number of impressions in the first 48 hours that this video was published. Basically, impression is when YouTube shows your thumbnail on a viewer's screen. Okay, so I want to find the total number of impressions and then the percentage of those impressions that went to my subscribers and see if it's less than 1%.
All right, so I'm just going to go here and first thing I'm going to do is set the time period. So, I'll going to custom. And this video was posted May 21st and 48 hours will be May 23rd. I'll hit apply. And that gives me that range. Now, here in the breakdown, I'll go to content. I actually want the breakdown of subscription status. Okay, so you can see this column or row, rather, is not subscribed and this row is subscribed. And you can see the number of views in the first 48 hours from those different viewers.
Okay, so now I want to see what the impressions are. I'm seeing the views, but I need to see the impressions. So, I'm going to go over to metrics. And I'm going to go down to reach and impressions. Hit that. Apply. All right, so you can see we have the total number of impressions. So, this is the total number of times the thumbnail for this video was shown to viewers on YouTube.
Now, unfortunately, I can't get the breakdown here of how many impressions were to non-subscribed people and how many were to subscribed. In order to do that, and it's just one of these quirks of the analytics dashboard, I actually have to go back out and use AI studio. So, ask studio. I'm sure I could have worded this more efficiently, but for this I'm just going to use this.
So, in the first 48 hours of my latest long-form upload being published, that's this video right here, the video in question, what percentage of the total impressions in that 48 hour period came from my subscribers? It's thinking. And so, here's the number. In the first 48 hours after you published, your videos are getting better, your views are getting worse. Here's why. Approximately 27.41% of your total impressions came from your subscribers.
So, here's the breakdown of the raw numbers. So, total impressions was 24,516. And of those impressions, 6,720 went to my subscribers. So, that's over a quarter of the test group, as was stated in the comment, saw the thumbnail for this video. That is far greater than less than 1%. So, what's going on? I'm not sure, but these are my numbers.
Let's look at another data point. All right, this is another quote from the comment in regards to this September 25 algorithm shift when our subscriber reach went way down. I'm willing to bet if you look at your own analytics and ask the Creator Studio AI for pre-September 2025 versus post-September 2025 video performance, you will see exactly what I am talking about. Before the change, and this is the data point, a much greater percentage of views were from subscribers.
All right, I'm back in my analytics to check to see if this reduction in subscriber views actually happened after September 2025, at least on my channel. So, here are my channel level analytics, and I'm in the advanced area. So, I'm going to first select a period here, 3 months before the September 2025 algorithm shift. So, I'm going to go back. All right, I'm going to start from June 1st. And I'm going to go all the way to August 31st, right before the September algorithm shift. And I'll hit apply. And that's just all my content and views. I'm going to go to breakdown. And I'm going to go down again and select subscription status.
So, looking at the results here, we have, again, this row not subscribed and subscribed. And if we look at the views for that 3-month period, 92% of the views on my channel in that period before September 2025, 92% came from people not subscribed to the channel, and 8% came from people subscribed to the channel. So, that's 3 months before this 2025 algorithm shift. Okay? 8%.
I'm going to go back up. And now I'm going to select a period after the September 2025 algorithm shift. So, I'll select after September, I'll select October 1st, 2025 and I'll go all the way out to the end of the year, December 31st. And hit apply, and let's see what comes up.
Okay, so now when we look at the results, 3 months after this September 2025 algorithm shift, when the share of views from my subscribers was supposed to go down, well, it went up. Actually, it more than doubled to 17%. So, that's more than double than the 8%. So, my subscriber engagement actually went up after the September 2025 algorithm shift.
So, looking at this, the system hasn't turned away my subscribers. It looks like it got better at finding the active and interested ones. Now, that's a lot of math, and I'm not a math teacher. I just played one on TV for 16 years. So, if you stuck around this far into the video, thank you so much for your time and attention. And if you're interested in the thinking behind what it takes to be a creator on YouTube, you know, my take on the process, subscribe to the channel and be sure to check your subscription feed for new videos, so you don't miss anything.
So, did nothing change? Was this September 2025 algorithm shift just a a ghost? Something did shift with the YouTube algorithm, but it wasn't the creation of a new discovery model. Basically, YouTube shifted the metric they used to determine how they push out your videos to more viewers. For a long time, we were told that if you want to grow on YouTube, you got to keep viewers on the platform at all costs. You need to generate lots of watch time. Apparently, since 2018, YouTube has been trying to pivot away from watch time as the dominant recommendation metric. It appears they were able to finally make that pivot away from watch time at scale, most likely with the help of AI.
Watch time was replaced as the dominant recommendation metric with viewer satisfaction. Watch time is still important, but now the system is concentrating more on satisfaction signals. Things like AVD, average view duration, like to view ratio, shares, surveys, the percentage of views that come from your subscribers. The algorithm also looks closely at returning viewers. This is a massive satisfaction signal now because it proves you aren't just getting clicks, you're building a viewing habit. It tells YouTube that your content is valuable enough that people want to make it a part of their routine, and that's what YouTube wants to see now.
So, what does all that mean for creators? Well, from what I can tell, it means that we need to work harder to get viewers to not only watch our videos and keep watching them, but also come back. And that brings me back to the beginning, to the video that sparked that passionate and illuminating comment. Because I'd argue that what I talk about in that video ties right into what the YouTube algorithm is favoring now. Satisfied viewers that come back. That's what we were all about in TV. That was our main goal in production. And guess what? One of the important elements of making a TV show that people watch and want to return to is how you use production value, where you put the polish so that it fits the moment, so that it enhances the story, the humanity, not overshadow it.
Satisfied viewers that come back is now what we have to be thinking about constantly when we're looking for video ideas, when we're filming, when we're editing, and when we're publishing. At the end of the day, all YouTube can really give us is reach. All they can do is put our video thumbnails in front of people. The rest is on us. We have to win the click. We have to keep them watching. And now, we have to keep them coming back for more. You up for it? I'll see you in the next video.