YouTube Tags Myth: List Tags in the Video Description

YouTube has been more proactive in shutting down channels that abuse YouTube tags. It's always been their policy that they could terminate a channel at any time for copying tags from the video's tag field to the description text. Yet, some creators felt the risk was worth it (which it's not!) and now many of those channels are shut down. Some had millions of subscribers, others had substantially less.

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OTHER CHANNELS I'M A PART OF

[VideoCreators]

YouTube has been shutting down channels that abuse video tags. Make sure you're in the clear!

[MichaelWarbux]

Also, banning channels is BS. You should get those warnings like you do when you get a strike or something and have to sit in "YouTube time out" for like 3 months or until you remove all the keyword stuffing out of your videos.

[PlasticScot]

I had been doing this and didn't know it wasn't allowed. I have now gone back edited and deleted any spam throughout my account. Thank you for this my friend, passionate about my channel and want to do it the right way.

[IleaneSmith]

I lot of so called YouTube "gurus" are teaching people to add those extra tags in the descriptions. It's a shame that people think they are doing things the right way only to wake up one day and all their videos are removed. It must be heart breaking when that happens. I wish YouTube had a one - page checklist that people could use when they upload videos. No one has time to read through the entire Playbook...
Thanks for the vid Tim Schmoyer 

[BrickTsar]

People are still doing this. I've been trying to figure out why some of us long time YpuTubers are dying while the new and upcoming YouTubers just blow past us. It's real discouraging when you see that some of them are doing practices like this

[PurpleSixBeats]

I have seen a lot of beat makers use tons of tags in description, subs watch likes and comments goes off the roof and no ban what so ever. So its tempting to do the same... :/

[Fearagen]

lol i was about todo this xD glad i researched it lol

[Harperlarp]

I’ve been doing this ‘keyword stuffing’ for a couple of years now. Is it still something I shouldn’t be doing? I only ask because this video’s info might be outdated by now.

[DreamframerPhotography]

I still see big YouTubers doing it though, and TubeBuddy also encourages having the same tags in the description and tag field. Of course, TubeBuddy doesn't suggest spamming the description, but they show you how many of your tags are included in the description, and then they tell you if you did a poor, fair, good, or awesome job, depending on how many tags you managed to put in your description. Now, it's not too hard to have a lot of tags in the description if your tags are short (this video has 15 tags in the title and description for example), but if they are long tail tags, then it's basically impossible to write a meaningful description with more than 3-4 tags in it, because it sounds really bad when the user starts reading all those long tail tags forcefully stuffed in the description, basically one after another. So, my only doubt is, does the number of tags in the description really have the influence on the video ranking, or not, because the game is far from fair between people who use short and long tail tags. Also, if YouTube is not looking at that anymore, why TubeBuddy still suggests that we include as many tags as possible in the title and description?

[CheekyTam]

Amazing that even the bigger channels got closed down.  I think YouTube is getting better at sifting out people that are trying to cheat the system and spam. 

[Thealowens]

Closing the channel without any warning seems a little harsh... but it is in the TOS, so GoogleTube is within their rights...

[JandSGames]

I am really glad I am subscribed to your channel! Otherwise I probably would have fallen into the "tags in the description" category of Youtubers lol. Keep up the good work

[MichaelWarbux]

I've done this in the past when it "legal" for lack of a better word. I really don't do it now because I'm writing better descriptions. The SEO on YouTube seems to get tougher and tougher. Pretty soon they'll just eliminate tags.

[somethingdifferent]

I actually had those "Extra tags" on a few of my videos for a while before I updated the information in the description section of each and every one of my videos. They've since been removed and I stopped doing that because I found it to be a complete waste of space and made my description text look cluttered in my opinion. I'm glad Google is cracking down on it. I hope it makes it a bit easier for people to find videos on the topics they're looking for.

[RobertIsMusic]

There are people especially on the Wrestling Review site of YouTube that are still using Tag spam in the description of the video. They found a loophole that if you hide the numbers of subs the Youtube flag system don't work property. The whole thing Is very frustrating but still my channel is growing and i'm highly motivated to make more content.

[NerdSyncProductions]

Is this the new format now? Or are you just trying it out to see how it works?

[SteveFrenchWoodNStuff]

It does seem very harsh. They should at least be given an explicit warning to remove the tag stuffing a week or so before outright termination.

[StevenDumala]

I have seen this on some channels and just didn't understand why when there is a place already to place your tags.
It would be better to just write a better description with the keywords in it.

[QDRquality]

I wonder which big channels where removed for a while....

[Minsooky]

I'm familiar with keyword stuffing when it comes to written content on the web, it's bad SEO practice, and I've seen clients get blacklisted entirely from Google from doing so, despite ignoring warning from me not to do it.  I don't have much sympathy.  I do think people who are doing it on Youtube should receive 1 warning to correct the problem, however, but if they continue to do it anyways, they should have their YT account removed.  Keyword stuffing is very 2007 SEO, I don't know why people still continue to do it lol.  Don't write for robots, write for people.