How Important Is Audience Retention For Ranking

[tchashow]

I just wanted to make this thread because I see a lot of people saying they are adding fake views to their vids. I'm not absolutely sure about this but I think adding fake views (especially when your video is still new) brings down your rankings.

The reason why I say this is because I've had videos rank with no views and I'm sure you've seen videos on the first page of results that have no views. And I know a lot of us think "how the hell this video make it to the first page?"

Without any views I think youtube then ranks your video based on keyword usage (title, description and tags)
Videos with very little views can rank fast also because they usually are real views and real views have higher retention rates.

With that being said adding fake views (unless they have 100% audience retention) brings your ranking down because your retention rate decreases. Most of the services that provide fake views only watch your video for approx. 30 seconds which unless your video is very short reduces your retention rate.

If you are going to add fake views I think this should be done once your video is already nearing the first page of results just to make your video look more legit than other vids on the page. By then your video should be getting natural views and you should have high retention rates unless u make really crappy videos. So the retention rate balances out.

Like I said this is just a hypothesis of mine. I've ranked videos faster adding no views. When I do add views it takes longer to rank. Hope this make sense because I'm very high right now lol

 

[Adam Rock]

A shit ton important. I've tested some videos with higher retention vs lower and my higher ones got near the top of the results while the retention came on near the bottom. Also the higher retention video was featured on the side. Perhaps do some tests on your own and see for yourself how important it is?

 

[PinguSpy]

You want a good ranking?

Step0:

Monetize your video title/tags/description.

Step1:

Blast your target video with hundred "k" of views.

Step2:

Apply network partner.

Step3:

Stop blasting your video with fake views anymore.
Just enable the monetize function in tht video.


Check your ranking. I have this experience, 3 of my videos => from page 2, jump to page1 + ranking number 1! WTF??!!

Monetize video ($$$) => for Google.

Just like Google SERP nowadays, Google love ads/adwords(straight money to them).

 

[tchashow]

A shit ton important. I've tested some videos with higher retention vs lower and my higher ones got near the top of the results while the retention came on near the bottom. Also the higher retention video was featured on the side. Perhaps do some tests on your own and see for yourself how important it is?

Well that's what I did do which is how I came up with my hypothesis about fake views.

 

[Dark Joker]

very interesting seems i'm not the only one with the ranking problem.

nowadays you don't need thousands of fake views/likes/Fav to rank your video higher!

higher retention views > thousands of fake views/likes/Fav!

tested it myself and still testing.

 

[JediMarketer]

I agree with this 100%. I ranked a video on first page with 1700 views
only and the keyword was extremely hard to rank for.

 

[jiipodd]

I have similar kinds of experiences, although my data sample is still small. Would make perfect sense though.

 

[tchashow]

higher retention views > thousands of fake views/likes/Fav!

Exactly! But fake views, likes, and favorites help your video to stay up longer. Right now with the testing I've been doing its seems like high views, likes, and age of the account prevents video from being taken down so fast.

 

[skittles]

Exactly! But fake views, likes, and favorites help your video to stay up longer. Right now with the testing I've been doing its seems like high views, likes, and age of the account prevents video from being taken down so fast.

I believe likes are far more important than anything as their new system prevents anyone from botting. Likes are vital when it comes to ranking a video properly, in fact the tests I have done to front page videos have come out to be: videos without a good amount of likes will not front page or rank a video. Audience retention plays no real importance with new videos when wanting to front page.

 

[therage]

I have to agree with Skittles. SEO, Likes, Favorites, Comments, Age of Account, then View Retention play important roles for new videos. For getting to YouTube Rankings it is different, but you want to win AS MANY awards from YouTube for a new video as you can, so it get's featured. More featured, more shares. More shares, more audience and money created.

It is now about being strategically smart with YouTube, not the old "blast views, likes, favorites to rank". If you can't evolve your attack patterns for YouTube you will be left behind.

 

[Gassly]

Retention plays a huge role. I had a video that was 259k views here, and for its keyword, it was ranked in the first page...
Then someone on this site was giving 10k free views, so I hopped on it, got the 10k views overnight, but when I searched the keyword, I couldn't find my video on the first page anymore. It was not on the 3rd page. You know why? Because of the audience retention. This happened around July~August, my video's been up since January... Now it's in the 3rd page.

We gotta figure out which one of these sellers sell high audience retention views.

 

[xSlayerx96]

Retention plays a huge role. I had a video that was 259k views here, and for its keyword, it was ranked in the first page...
Then someone on this site was giving 10k free views, so I hopped on it, got the 10k views overnight, but when I searched the keyword, I couldn't find my video on the first page anymore. It was not on the 3rd page. You know why? Because of the audience retention. This happened around July~August, my video's been up since January... Now it's in the 3rd page.

We gotta figure out which one of these sellers sell high audience retention views.

I have a video of 10k views mostly made with vagex, so 30 seconds,very poor retention, the video is 4 minutes long xD But it ranked very well, between videos of 100,200k even 10 milion. Ohh, and the video is a month old. I also have 600 likes on it. I think likes still play a bigger role than retention. And probably tags, because i've got views from 5 keywords.

 

[therage]

It is like I said before but I will recap. It goes SEO, Likes, Favorites, Comments, YouTube Channel Age, Awards from YouTube and finally viewer retention for new videos. To rank well on YouTube you need to add in more retention BUT for White Hat we prefer to spend money ON YouTube Adwords. I really don't care about retention until I have done everything possible to try to win some YouTube awards for that video, THEN I go aggressive with campaigns and such.

 

[tchashow]

Well I believe the ranking goes SEO (keyword targeted title, tags, and description), Audience Retention and then Likes, Comments, Favorites.

That's why we see so many videos with very few views ranking on the first page.

It seems like a lot of people have different thoughts on what makes videos rank the best. If I had more time I would fully research what works best. Right now I'm only doing a few tests and from my few tests it seems audience retention is a very important factor in ranking.

 

[Frankie4Fingers]

It is like I said before but I will recap. It goes SEO, Likes, Favorites, Comments, YouTube Channel Age, Awards from YouTube and finally viewer retention for new videos. To rank well on YouTube you need to add in more retention BUT for White Hat we prefer to spend money ON YouTube Adwords. I really don't care about retention until I have done everything possible to try to win some YouTube awards for that video, THEN I go aggressive with campaigns and such.

Aren't awards gone for good after YT latest updates?

 

[Gassly]

Aren't awards gone for good after YT latest updates?

They are.

 

[Grunge]

I agree with this 100%. I ranked a video on first page with 1700 views
only and the keyword was extremely hard to rank for.

When you say "extremely hard to rank for", what sort of video results are you looking at? More than 100,000 video results? What about the channel authority and backlinks to that video?

I'm just curious to learn because I'm in competitive niches with an average of 300,000 video results and channels with authority

 

[Surgeon]

Well I believe the ranking goes SEO (keyword targeted title, tags, and description), Audience Retention and then Likes, Comments, Favorites.

Ok. We all agree that Audience Retention is important for ranking. If we concentrate on good keyword rich title, tags and description, a good number of views with good audience retention will rank your videos well.

Now here is the question: how much are you willing to pay for 1k visitors with good audience retention rates? Who sells these services?

 

[tchashow]

Ok. We all agree that Audience Retention is important for ranking. If we concentrate on good keyword rich title, tags and description, a good number of views with good audience retention will rank your videos well.

Now here is the question: how much are you willing to pay for 1k visitors with good audience retention rates? Who sells these services?

Instead of paying for views why not just get real views? Unless you're video is really crappy or not very targeted for your select audience then you should have very good audience retention with natural views using good SEO and promotion.

 

[Surgeon]

Instead of paying for views why not just get real views? Unless you're video is really crappy or not very targeted for your select audience then you should have very good audience retention with natural views using good SEO and promotion.

ok. What you are saying is that we should make a good video, targeted to our audience, with good keyword rich title, descript and tags and just wait for the natural results? This looks like the simplest way to go.

Besides this, do you use any extra promotion?