Transcription
If your impressions or views have been down lately, I think I might know why. You're not imagining it. I've noticed it, too. And I might be a little late to the game in blaming YouTube, but uh it might be their fault. I'm going to share with you the four main reasons why I think views and impressions are down across YouTube. And I'm going to tell you how to fix it.
I noticed it six to eight months ago. My views were way down towards the end of last summer. Uh and I'm noticing it again. And I've made videos on this before where I kind of I didn't blame YouTube. I basically said you got to look at yourself and see what you can do to fix it. Uh it's not YouTube's fault. YouTube doesn't doesn't push videos anyways. But I get a lot of comments on those videos. Uh by people who say yes, views are down. I haven't done anything wrong. I haven't done anything different. And uh for whatever reason, YouTube just doesn't like my videos anymore. doesn't matter what I do with new videos, they don't like them. So, um, yeah, I'm I'm starting to think that, yeah, maybe YouTube has something to do with this. So, I want to explain the four reasons that I've come up with why I think views are down across the board.
For me, I noticed last summer, so maybe eight, nine months ago, that the homepage on YouTube changed. Now, when YouTube changes their homepage, they may not change it for everybody. It might be, you know, changes might take effect at different times for different locations, uh, depending on the size of your channel. I I'm not exactly sure. Um, but I I do know when YouTube rolls out changes, they don't change it for everybody at the same time. So, for me, I noticed last late last summer that the homepage changed for me. It used to be that that when I went to the YouTube homepage, I would get four options, four thumbnails across uh across the page. Okay? So, each row would have four options of thumbnails and I'd be able to see three rows on a page without scrolling. All right? So, I'm talking about on a on a regular 1080p laptop. Um or no, it was uh just a regular 1080p monitor. Okay. 1920 x 1080. Uh, I was seeing four across and three vertical. So, basically 12. You'd see 12 options. But what I noticed was this changed. Uh, they made the thumbnails bigger. All right. So, with bigger thumbnails, uh, on that same monitor, I could only see three across and two vertically. So, that was what's that? Six. Six choices is all I got to see. um unless I minimized the left uh menu bar then then you could get back to four but the thumbnails were bigger so there was less choice and that means it's harder to stand out right like if if YouTube is going to show somebody 12 options right uh then you know there are 12 options that the viewer can can look at before deciding what they want to see but if they're only showing six options before the viewer scrolls uh uh it's much harder to get seen, right? There's there's much less opportunity uh for your thumbnails to be seen. That alone can result in in fewer impressions. In fact, I'd argue that that alone could reduce your impressions by half, right? Six versus 12.
The second thing I noticed around the same time is quite often that second row, the second row of three thumbnails, quite often they weren't long form videos at all. They were shorts. YouTube was showing shorts on the homepage. Okay? And sometimes not even shorts, sometimes games, like YouTube games or even YouTube posts. Okay? Now, when they do that, you only see three options uh for long form videos before you have to scroll. Um so again, that cuts it in half again. So 25% of what the impressions were. Now, you do have the option of like there's three little dots in the upper right uh corner of each row. Um like a row of shorts. There' be three dots that you can click that and and tell it please don't show me shorts as often or for the next 30 days. I can't remember exactly what it says, but you can turn that off, but not indefinitely. They will come back. And the same thing for games, the same thing for posts, right? If you see them popping up, you have the option of uh of of stopping them, but again, just for 30 days. So, that too, I think, is dramatically decreasing the number of opportunities for your thumbnails to be shown.
Before I get to the next point, I want to show you something I've been doing lately. I've been spending more time upfront before recording. And one of the tools I've been using lately is one of 10. Let me show you this real quick. What I like about this is it lets me see what's actually working so I'm not guessing. Instead of going out, finishing a video, editing it, and then finding out it doesn't land. I'll use one of 10 to search for outliers first. I'll see what's performing in my niche and helps me with a topic I might want to explore in my next video. I also use the idea generator, which gives me ideas based on what's been working on my channel. I don't use the thumbnails it creates for me here, although you can. I just use them to give me ideas. And once I've got the idea dialed in, I use the title generator to help me come up with a perfect title for my video. There's also a thumbnail generator I've been playing around with. But for me, the real value right now is just making better decisions before I go out and film something. Because with what's happening on YouTube right now, you don't get as many chances. If your idea doesn't grab attention right away, it's probably not getting clicked. I'll leave a link below where you can get your first month for $1 if you want to check it out. But regardless of what you use, this part of the process is becoming more and more important.
The third reason I think views are down, uh, and this can't be understated, is the use of TVs. uh the fact that viewers are are watching videos on TVs more and more. Um now at first you might think, well, how does that affect it at all? Like maybe my my videos will, you know, impressions of my thumbnails will be shown on TV instead. Yeah, sure. But what you have to remember or what you have to think about is the way viewers interact with a TV. Like what are their viewing habits when people are watching on a TV? Uh, I believe I mean I'm just kind of trying to think of my own use because I see them on on a TV sometimes. Uh, most of my viewing is on a computer, but um, from time to time I use a t a TV and thumbnails are shown completely differently, right? You may have one row and then more descriptions below it. And it probably depends quite honestly on the make and model of your TV and the YouTube app for that TV. Okay? And that can change all the time too. So depending on how people watch videos, um, you know, whether it's on a computer, on a phone, on a tablet, on a TV, right? You the YouTube homepage is going to be shown differently for each of those uh device types. Now, I've written down some things because I thought this was really interesting and I don't want to get them wrong. Um I believe when people are watching on a TV, there is less scrolling, okay? less looking for the perfect video. Now, maybe you spend some time searching for your first video, but after that, I think if people are watching TV, their watching habits tend to be more passive, right? You're not actively choosing the next video. A lot of times, people might just let it roll and and the next video is chosen for them. Okay? So, I think viewing habits are completely different on a TV. Now, if I look at my own uh account, my own channel, this is a little bit, this is me proving to myself that that TVs are being used more and more on my channel in 2024. So, I wrote this down by a year. In 2024, 24.7% of my viewers watched videos on a TV. Okay, 24. So, about a quarter. All right? The next year in 2025, it was 27.2%. So more people watching on TV in 2026 so far. So we're about halfway through April right now. Uh it's jumped to 34.3% are watching my videos on TV. You can check us you can check this out for yourself as well. If you go into your analytics and click on audience and scroll down a little bit, you can see how people are watching your videos. You can do that by channel, like for your whole channel, or if you go into the analytics of specific videos, you can see how people are watching those specific videos. All right? And I'm telling you that because uh I did that recently. Well, actually, before I get to that, so 34% for 2026, April alone, and again, we're a little more than halfway through April, it's up to 37% watching on TV. And my most recent video that's that's been doing quite well, 50%. 50% uh of all of the views I'm getting on my most recent video, which is about a week ago, are watching it on a TV. That blew my mind. So, it's basically doubled in the last couple of years, uh, from 24% to 50% on that last video. Um, more and more people are watching YouTube videos on televisions and they may not be getting the same choice as you used to get uh on a computer say even a year ago.
Reason number four, and I've already kind of touched on this, but uh be honest with yourself. How often when you pull up YouTube do you scroll past the first page? Right? More often than not, I'd be willing to guess that you're going to choose something on that first page because YouTube is really good and getting better at at giving you choices that they think you want to watch. And even if there's only six choices, there's probably something on that first page that you want to watch. So, how often do you actually scroll beyond that first page? Um, for me, not that often. Sometimes, but so, so that's reason number four. people just don't scroll past the first page very often. Uh, and you can kind of think of it like uh Google as well, right? If you're doing a Google search, um, how many people still do Google searches? I don't do as many as I used to. Uh, I search on YouTube these days or chat GPT, but anyways, back to Google. Um, the first page. If you were making websites, you would want your website to show up on the first page, right? You don't want people to have to scroll down to the bottom of that page. Yeah. So, not even just the first page, but the top uh the the the originally visible part of that first page. You want to show up there. That's prime real estate. So, if your video is not showing up there, and again, today it might only be six choices you're given, uh maybe even three if if that second row is full of shorts or games, um right, the chances of people discovering you go way down.
But whatever the reason, if you are experiencing lower impressions and views, it's more important than ever to stand out from your competition from other videos in your niche. And the way to do that is to make sure you're making videos that people want to watch, people in your audience. Uh spend time researching your topic ideas, right? Using a tool like one of 10. Spend time researching those ideas. Look for things that uh people are interested in, people in your niche are interested in. Work on your thumbnails, right? Make sure your thumbnails are doing their job and and people are actually clicking. And your titles are so important, right? Research titles that work. Um put your own spin on them. Remember, your titles and your thumbnails together are what are the package that people look at when deciding what to click next. So whether there's 12 options or six options, you need to work harder than ever to get yours to be the one that people click. You need to stand out. And probably one of the best ways to make your videos stand out is to use yourself as part of your brand. Spend some time on on branding on uh how you want your channel to look, how you want your videos to look, and put yourself in your videos. If you can put yourself in your videos, you become your brand. And nobody can take that away from you, right? No matter how good AI gets at at replicating videos, at teaching people how to do things in videos, how-to type videos, no matter how good AI gets, if you make videos where you are part of your brand, AI can't replicate that easily, right? AI is not you. There's only one you. So, put yourself in your videos and uh I think that'll help. I hope you found this helpful. My name is Rob. Thanks for watching and I'll see you in the next video. Bye.