Debunking YouTube’s Biggest Myth: Tags

This video might have cost me thousands of dollars, but I had to make it. Today, I want to discuss the biggest myth in YouTube's history. There is a considerable amount of misinformation circulating in the world of YouTube right now, and this particular myth isn't receiving enough attention. Unfortunately, like many predatory phenomena, it's the average person who ends up suffering—small content creators and viewers are being misled outright.

FOR LEGAL REASONS THIS VIDEO IS AN OPINION

EDIT: VidIQ reached out to me and removed the misleading language from their website. I really respect that and hope TubeBuddy follows suit.

Here are the chapters for this video. Feel free to jump around accordingly:

0:00 Introduction
0:50 Important Context
2:13 The Biggest Myth YouTube History
3:18 Creator Proof 1
4:05 Creator Proof 2
4:41 Creator Proof 3
5:07 Creator Proof 4
5:25 Creator Proof 5
5:48 Creator Proof 6
6:05 Creator Proof 7
6:38 Proof From YouTube
7:22 Hypocrisy and Misinformation
8:38 Why This Is VERY Misleading
9:25 Why This Video Likely Cost Me Thousands
10:11 Okay, So What Does Matter?

Channels featured in this video:

Thanks so much for the people that helped with this one! Please go check out their channels!

Note:
I deliberately leave the channel icons and video titles on each video for reference in case anyone wants to see the full videos featured in these documentaries. If anything is unclear, or for additional references, please reach out, and I will happily provide a link to any of the following content discussed, featured, or used as a b-roll in the video.

Copyright Note:
Copyright Disclaimer under section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976, allowance is made for “fair use” for purposes such as criticism, comment, news reporting, teaching, scholarship, education and research.

Music:
All songs featured in the video are from:
- YouTube's copyright free music library.
- Or some of Ian Taylor's incredible music. Please check out his music on Spotify if you are into that style. I cannot emphasize enough how good the music is.

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Creators note:
Hello, my name is Zackary Smigel. I've been creating YouTube videos since I was a kid. I started YouTube full-time about five years ago. You might have seen me from Real Estate License Wizard, where I obtained 60,000 subscribers and over 5 million channel views. I have since left that channel for creative pursuits, and this is my first crack at starting something new. I'd appreciate a like and subscribe if this content interests you and I captured your attention for even just a few moments.

On a secondary note, still a work in progress in the new place. I can't get my lighting right, so bare me with me. The audio improved from the last video but again, still having issues with my lighting. I think I figured out my issue so hopefully it'll improve next video. Regardless, I hope the video is enjoyable for you.

Thanks so much for watching,

Zackary Smigel

#youtube #videoessay #zackarysmigel

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Don’t forget to like and subscribe for more engaging video commentary!

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[ZackarySmigel]

The second biggest myth in YouTube history? If you press the like button on this video, you will receive good luck for 3 days. There's only one way to test this myth, so maybe you should like this video.

[ZackarySmigel]

UPDATE! VidIQ reached out to me and adjusted any conflicting language from their website. I respect their effort for transparency and now urge TubeBuddy to follow suit.

[SolaireIntensifies]

I appreciate you taking the monetary hit to inform instead of mislead. They very least I can do is leave a like. I'm glad I subbed to you, you seem like a real stand up dude

[fefwis]

Tags used to work in the beginning of YouTube. Once Youtube started using more and more machine learning, they started ignoring tags since they can be gamed.

[alexwingo]

Zack, you are genuinely a national treasure. This is an incredibly valuable video even if I’m not intending to become a YouTube creator. Thank you!

[Jen-Chapin]

I think for those of us who have been YouTubers for awhile, we know that tags are BS. But for newer YouTubers you’re right, those sites can be super misleading.

[InternetAnarchist]

The GOAT back to share some YT knowledge. 💯

[CrossKnights]

I don't know this for sure but I believe that tags used to matter quite a bit. And I'm talking like 10 years ago at this point during the Glory Days of Let's Play's. When I would make a video of a new Flash game I would often outpace people that had virtually the same video and I'm pretty sure it was because I used my tags correctly. It was around the time they changed the upload screen and kind of hid the tags that I feel like they were deranked in importance. I don't remember what that was, maybe 5 years ago? Don't have any proof or anything and maybe it was just psychosomatic but it certainly seemed like they used to do something but don't anymore.

[Henrypooh]

I thought this myth died away years ago, after people started doing that thing where you list all the big channel names as tags to "try get views when people search them", and then realizing it's not working. This happened many years ago, and there's still companies and channels trying to push this tags nonsense? We really do love to repeat our history huh..

[aisushitai]

Zackary's videos are always so elegantly worded and come from such a well-educated background it's honestly like a little treat of Youtube Lore whenever he drops a video.

[THE_MOONMAN]

This might be the single most underrated channel on YouTube. Nice to see you growing quickly cause you deserve it. I don't have any intention of starting a channel but having a deeper understanding of this platform we use so much is important stuff. It's crazy how bad of a job YouTube does explaining these things!

[HSGAutomotive]

The only reason why I have always filled out the quota of tags on every video I make is as a futureproof for if YouTube ever decides to shake things up (as they are infamous for) and suddenly tags become vital. It may never happen, but if it does I'm not retroactively adding tags to 5, 600 videos, whereas as it stands they are all already done for the sake of a small amount of my time. Could remain a waste, but its a risk I'm willing to take.

[amylsmith]

I work in marketing myself (predominantly socials) and tags, even hashtags, have incredibly limited use these days. They used to be something that you genuinely did need a strategy behind and had to hit the sweet spot of 13-22 hashtags that would reach the perfect market. These days even with all the strategy behind it, at most a client would get maybe 1% of interactions on a post from a hashtag, and it's even lower odds for someone to convert or follow. It's way more important to have something that catches the eye and have your SEO built into your content/captions.

[TreeM]

Zack, this is incredible, your work's inspired me for a long time, this is another great addition.

[Psycandy]

There is no such thing as YT SEO, just the highest view counts biased towards newer content in each of your broad categories. Mostly. However, this need not be a problem at all, you can switch to an offline app which lets you subscribe to channels without logging in, and lets you adjust the UI and the recommendation engine to your taste. BTW... tags are generated from transcripts. Transcripts identify copyrighted material, highlight inappropriate language, indicate subject matter and provide the word frequencies to affect search. This is why youtubers voice over everything.

[snowpea]

i never knew video tags were different than shorts hashtags... TYSM 😭 you are a lifesaver
i'm trying to grow my art business, but i need a platform to do it, so i have begun growing my channel and my social media, a lot of these videos have been very misleading so thank you so much

[coolbrotherf]

I agree. I've found that creators that just focus on videos that cater to a specific niche of people or interests with as much production quality as they can muster will grow. People are always looking for very specific kinds of content so if you have something interesting to add, the algorithm will find a community of people looking for that content.

The biggest reason I see for small channels failing to gain traction is really low production value or content that is too broad to appeal to anyone specifically.

For example, don't be a "gaming" channel, be a channel for a specific game or genere of games that don't have a massive scene of creators to watch yet. Creators that fill their channels with lots of random videos will drive viewers away who aren't getting the content they subscribed for. Also picking content that is already over saturated is really hard because the popular channels will soak up 99.9% of your potential views. Topics with less competition but growing interest can help grow a channel from nothing.

[samonsthewise]

i love how you just float around the internet and point at stuff, like a weathman but for the world wide webernetz.

[salvadormuro]

Thanks for clarifying tags and hashtags. Had no idea 😅I’ve learned a lot watching your channel! I can’t help but think there’s more than just those companies trying to push lies. How does YouTube stay organized for the viewer as far as perception of amounts of (worth your time)videos being uploaded? Like every bit of my experience on YT has been custom tailored to me. I know there’s a stupid amount of content uploaded constantly but I only could possibly see a small amount per day/week. So when I hear channels trying to grow by using this type of crap it are being scammed more or less, makes me sad that they’re being buried. But for YT it would be fine. Keeping the poor distracted so to speak. I mean I’ve used hashtags to search like 3 times ever and was for help repairing a specific thing. I might need to take the foil hat off. Oh this is too long. Okay bye. Thanks for sharing.

[secret]

I'm constantly amazed by your content, and really like the "cheap" nostalgic effect of you speaking in front of the background.