YouTube Shorts Algorithm — Explained!

Hello Insiders! Today we're here with Todd, Director of Shorts Product Management, to chat about some of the biggest questions coming from creators.

Check it out and leave us your comments and questions below!

Chapters:
0:00 Intro
0:15 Is the Shorts algorithm the same as long-form and should we still be thinking audience first?
1:20 What exactly counts as a view on the Shorts feed?
2:30 What is viewed vs swiped away in Youtube Analytics?
2:55 How long should a Short be?
3:55 What’s up with custom thumbnails?
4:53 Do hashtags still matter?
5:27 Does posting time matter for Shorts performance?
5:45 Does posting quantity matter for Short?
6:17 Why do Shorts sometime get views then just stop?
7:23 Should you delete and repost to get more views?
7:49 Are Shorts cannibalization long-form?
9:40 Will all Short features come to mobile and desktop?
10:08 Can Shorts be used to build community?
10:53 What is the future of Shorts
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Creator Insider is an informal YouTube channel to share information from the YouTube Creator technical team with the wider Creator community. We will feature different people talking about the products they work on and changes we are making so you have more context.

[SuperEmptyHero]

99% of the money made by shorts are for compilations of stolen content and YouTube has done nothing to address this. “Funny clips I found” is the most popular form of shorts and it’s killing the rest of us

[MrGreen]

Why are most new channels experiencing the issue where their shorts dont even get a seed audience? The shorts get 0 views? Is this an issue on the creator's side? This has happned on my channel and many other creators.

[evrimagaci]

Great questions, great answers, thank you! The only thing I do not agree is the thumbnails. Thumbnails are not only there to attract the viewer to that particular video, but it is also a part of the brand recognition on your channel page. If the Shorts tab is filled with dumb looking frames that are randomly selected, it hurts the image. It shouldn't be that hard to give creators the option to at least pick the frame they want to showcase.

[BSoloe]

Let us select the frame the YT short uses as the thumbnail on PC please :)

[MyHeartIsInVermont]

But why does a short that goes viral (millions of view, 100, 000 vph) suddenly drop to nothing? If the algorithm is doing so well, why does it suddenly stop?? I feel like this was almost answered in the video but the explanation stopped short: "depending on how it goes". According to my analytics it was going extremely well. So what gives? Great video. Thank you

[vaskoobscura_]

The most frustrating thing about short is how fast the views can die. A short gets a ton of views and is set on a good vertical trajectory and then it just flattens off all of a sudden. It doesn't taper off is just abruptly stops getting views. The answer in this video didn't really answer anything but it would be great if YouTube could figure out what's causing this.

[HipyoTech]

Todd, if you care about being creator first - you NEED to adjust the linking change that is coming on August 31st. You've been telling us to make evergreen content for the last few years - and this change is horrible and will effect small creators really negatively. Overnight my whole back log of shorts will stop converting. - Allow creators who are verified and two factored to still keep links in their shorts.

[thinknoodles]

Can you PLEASE add a shorts tab on YT Studio Desktop? Why has this taken so long?

[STREETFOODJOURNEY]

this guy doesn't want to admit that shorts really destroys your long videos, in fact, YouTube shorts really destroyed my youtube income. i have more than 700, 000 subscribers but my income is only 1/7 from what i get when i have 100.000 subscribers. When you upload shorts videos, youtube no longer push your long video like they used to. You like it or not that's the fact. That's why lots of youtubers now start to move to Facebook

[AamandBasil]

we knew for a fact that our audience is there, however even after 155 original shorts, the YT algorithm somehow is not reaching that audience. Even though from time to time we get a jump and it seems like we are able to reach our audience, the short just suddenly stops getting shown, we can clearly see that in the analytics. This behavior is pretty demotivating to be honest, since it looks like finally YT found our audience and then bamm, nothing!

[bhaskarjyoti]

I used to thousands of views on my own content in shorts but now my views don't even reach 100. The thing is Youtube doesn't even care for small creators who are doing their own contents rather than stealing someone else's content and putting it in shorts. Just tell directly you guys don't care about small creators, only spending more money on bigger content creators.

[StarWarsUpdate]

Why would we "accept that the short got low views, and move on", when we know that if we repost it, it's going to potentially get a high number of views?
And if you're saying "the algorithm is finding an audience that will enjoy your content and how that goes then determines when it does the "drop off"...", then you need to improve this part of the algorithm and keep finding the audience that enjoys the content. It just doesn't make sense to completely end serving the content to the audience, and quite frankly it's annoying. Another thing - posting time of day DOES matter, why would I expect to get views if my main timezone audience is asleep? I'm uploading on number of channels (this star wars one is just a pass time, the other channels are livelihood) and one of the channels is for kids - why would I post if theyre at SCHOOL for instance, knowing that the views are going to die after around 6 hours. Another thing - posting amount DOES matter - if I upload a short in the middle of the first 6 hour period of another short, it breaks the views for both shorts. It's like we have to wait until the algorithm is DONE with the current short and dumps it, before uploading a new one, otherwise you get no views on the new one. Another bunch of vague / wishy washy answers to the questions the creators NEED ANSWERS to. It's just insulting that these are the "answers" that are given, time and time again. Sorry about the rant, but these answers are not acceptable. Don't even bother doing these interviews if you're just going to give these vague answers that the creators KNOW are BS.

[AuthenTech]

I find the Shorts algorithm bit janky and slow. While TikTok or IG content can pop off in a few hours or days, it can take YT weeks and often months to “find the right audience”, and then pops off. I hope they can improve this.

[PokePunisher]

Reposting shorts does work. I've posted a short that received almost no views. If I feel confident that it would have received more views, then I recreate it and post it a second time. One time the first post only got 14 views, but the second post received 2k views. Also, if you post shorts too closely together, often only the most recent short will be disseminated while the first short will be forgotten by the algorithm.

[BarefootSailingAdventures]

Can publishing Shorts have any affect on Long Form performance? Concerned about negative affects on Long Form.

[airailimages]

A question that still has not been answered: Why not allow one -- just one -- mid-roll ad insert on videos 5 minutes to 8 minutes in length? This would be lucrative for creators as well as for YouTube. Five-minute videos can readily support one mid-roll ad.

[ACEDTVL]

could you guys add in the short reel, a reminder for long-form content from channels that we are already subscribed to? Short reel's biggest flaw at the moment is it doesn't remind viewers that they are subscribed to channels that make long-form content and they may have a new video released. As of now once you get in the Shorts reel section you are pretty much stuck there.

[MaxwellGamerPlays]

The comment "if you upload on desktop it's higher resolution"...is that true? I found that uploading on an iPhone gives SD and HD options, but on my Samsung Flip it only gave the SD option. I never upload on desktop because of the lack of thumbnail control

[videosibueno]

This explains nothing of relevance to small creators like myself. We upload a short, it gets pumped for maybe 1k views max for an hour or two, then all of a sudden flatlines to never receive a view again. why cant youtube address this?

[EchoFlix]

If thumbnails can be attached while uploading short videos in the mobile version, why not in the PC version? You should also see this. Although it is said that thumbnails are not an issue, I think thumbnails are very important to express the external beauty of a video. It is important to have the option to select thumbnails on the computer.