While there is no definitive reason why YouTube stops recommending videos, being aware of consistency and quality is integral in helping turn this around.
One of the biggest ways to monitor growth on YouTube is the number of views that a video gets. One of the best ways to get more views outside of your subscribers is by YouTube suggesting your video on the home page or the recommendation sidebar when people are viewing a video.
To date, how or why YouTube recommends one video over another remains a mystery. However, it is believed that it has to do with consistency and the quality of the uploaded videos.
This is as they affect your click-through-rate and average-video-duration, which are two factors that are believed to influence which videos are recommended.
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How do YouTube algorithms work in 2022?
The metrics to measure popular videos that are recommended by YouTube has changed throughout the years.
From being based on videos that are clicked on initially, which resulted in click bait-y videos, to when it was based on videos with the most watch time.
In 2015, YouTube changed these metrics again to be based on viewer satisfaction. Meaning that YouTube now pays attention to the surveys that it sends out and the responses received, to every time you click “not interested” on video options, and to how many likes and shares a video gets.
These are now considered to influence which videos are recommended to you.
Why does YouTube stop recommending my videos?
Again, the actual algorithm that determines how YouTube decides which videos to recommend is one the platform’s biggest kept secret.
Therefore, it is seemingly based on speculation and a 2015 research paper published by Google engineers that shared the evolution of the metric that YouTube has used since its inception to inform its recommended videos.
Two important factors which are influential in increasing the chances of your video being recommended, whether on the home page or the sidebar when you are watching a video, is the click-through-rate (CTR) and average-viewer-duration (AVD).
CTR refers to how many clicks a video gets when it appears based on the thumbnail and wording of the video title.
Wording the title of your video is important, especially for smaller YouTubers, as the title should optimise the video so that when someone types in certain key words and phrases, your video pops up too.
Moreover, AVD is how long a viewer watched the video, and the average recommended time is over 30 seconds for short-form content.
For long form videos, an average of seven to nine minutes is considered enough to influence whether the video will be recommended or not.
Another factor which attributes to a video being recommended is consistency. Changing your consistency seemingly affects your algorithm on YouTube.
Therefore, there will be a dip in terms of YouTube recommending your videos, which will result in a dip in viewers and recommendations by YouTube.
To fix the matter, there are interventions which include having patience, being consistent and specific, and improving the quality of your videos.
1. Patience
The biggest tip is to be patient. Seeing a dip in your views, meaning a dip in your income from your videos, can lead to feeling despondent, especially since they might have been putting in the work to see improvement in their video recommendations.
But patience is required, which can be weeks or months, as has been asserted by the Reddit community chat group which attempted to find out why their videos stopped being recommended.
They found that after the initial dip, their numbers improved after months, largely due to their patience.
2. Consistency and content specificity
Consistency is key if you want to have your videos recommended. However, being content-specific is also important, as it helps to establish the premise of your videos, which allows the viewer to know what they can expect from your content.
Again, videos which set the premise of the video within its first 30 seconds have better chances of having a better AVD rate, which helps YouTube recommend your videos more.
To attain this, you need to have established uploading days and maintain consistency in this regard.
3. Overall quality your videos
Besides being concerned about improving the quality of the videos, whether it is by using a better camera or improving your editing style, the overall quality of your videos and channel needs to be prioritised.
This includes the video thumbnail, which is directly linked to how many CTRs you get. Moreover, you should title your video so that the terms used are optimal.
This is so that when someone is searching for videos using certain keywords, your videos pop up. One platform that has made this easier to do is TubeBuddy.