llamaslayer
Junior Member
- Jul 31, 2012
- 183
- 45
Hey guys,
I've tried my hand recently at ranking YouTube videos based only off of views and have made a few very informative discoveries during my experiments.
So, a commonly discussed topic is that social interaction on the video (likes, comments, etc) are what ranks a video best. While I have zero evidence to prove that this theory is incorrect, I do have strong evidence to suggest that Audience Retention is absolutely the most valuable aspect of video rankings on YouTube at the current time.
To start, I uploaded a video in an extremely competitive gaming niche and purchased 5,000 views with no regard to audience retention. I then let this video sit for over two weeks to see what sort of successes it got. Not only did the video not receive a single like or comment in those two weeks, but the views went up by so little that it clearly was not anywhere worthwhile in the rankings. I searched for it, but could not easily find it in the results for the keyword.
Next, I uploaded a similar video with the same keyword and almost identical content and purchased 5,000 views with guaranteed 60-80% audience retention. After two weeks, the audience retention was 81%, it had 74 likes, 25 comments and had gotten 1,250 views on its own. In the rankings, the video was the last spot on page 1, effectively verifying my theory that audience rent-ion is king.
In closing, I probably could have done this test some other way besides buying views to receive a little less "black-hat-esque" results, but I do believe my tests prove that audience retention is king and that it is not just a myth.
Also, keep in mind that a video with lots of views and zero likes or comments looks odd and people tend to stray away from them, so keep that in mind.
Thanks for taking the time to read my post, I hope you found it helpful!
-llamaslayer
I've tried my hand recently at ranking YouTube videos based only off of views and have made a few very informative discoveries during my experiments.
So, a commonly discussed topic is that social interaction on the video (likes, comments, etc) are what ranks a video best. While I have zero evidence to prove that this theory is incorrect, I do have strong evidence to suggest that Audience Retention is absolutely the most valuable aspect of video rankings on YouTube at the current time.
To start, I uploaded a video in an extremely competitive gaming niche and purchased 5,000 views with no regard to audience retention. I then let this video sit for over two weeks to see what sort of successes it got. Not only did the video not receive a single like or comment in those two weeks, but the views went up by so little that it clearly was not anywhere worthwhile in the rankings. I searched for it, but could not easily find it in the results for the keyword.
Next, I uploaded a similar video with the same keyword and almost identical content and purchased 5,000 views with guaranteed 60-80% audience retention. After two weeks, the audience retention was 81%, it had 74 likes, 25 comments and had gotten 1,250 views on its own. In the rankings, the video was the last spot on page 1, effectively verifying my theory that audience rent-ion is king.
In closing, I probably could have done this test some other way besides buying views to receive a little less "black-hat-esque" results, but I do believe my tests prove that audience retention is king and that it is not just a myth.
Also, keep in mind that a video with lots of views and zero likes or comments looks odd and people tend to stray away from them, so keep that in mind.
Thanks for taking the time to read my post, I hope you found it helpful!
-llamaslayer
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