For quite a long time, the marker that defined whether or not a video on YouTube was truly successful was how many views it had gotten. This might seem like an overly simplified way to go about things these days but back then it was considered pretty valid and a big part of the reason why that is the case has to do with the fact that YouTube was still a new service that people were getting used to, and users as well as the people that worked at YouTube were not all too familiar with the various tricks that would be employed in order to boost view counts and make a certain video appear to be far more popular than it actually was.
After view counts started to become suspect in terms of determining how successful a video was, view times also started to be taken into account. This is because of the fact that the amount of time that people watch videos matters quite a bit. If you only watch the first 30 seconds of a view before navigating away, this means that you probably didn’t enjoy the video very much. Hence, if a video has lots of views but most of those views involve people navigating away before they watch a significant portion of it, this would affect how successful YouTube would deem the video.
The reason behind why this matters is because of the fact that it impacts the YouTube algorithm. YouTube initially recommended widely watched videos, then started taking into account view times. However, even now there is a long way to go before the videos that you are recommended would actually be high in quality every single time, and this is basically why YouTube has started to look into Satisfaction, a term they are using to refer to a metric that gauges how much a video is genuinely enjoyed.
There are a number of factors that impact this metric. There is of course the amount of time that a viewer watched a video as well as whether or not they actually finished it. More importantly whether or not a user gave a video a Like is also taken into account because of the fact that watching a video all the way through does not mean that you necessarily enjoyed it, a like or a share is going to indicate that you genuinely thought that it did what you were hoping it would do.
Apart from this, according to Creator Insider, YouTube is also conducting surveys in order to directly ask users what their experience was like. This is important because of the fact that it can help YouTube genuinely ascertain the kind of enjoyment people are receiving from videos rather than relying on metrics that might be the result of other factors that are not directly tied to enjoyment in general.
All of these new metrics are going to contribute to the YouTube algorithm becoming a lot better in the long run. This is important because of the fact that it plays quite an important role in the kind of videos that you would end up seeing while you are checking out what YouTube has to offer.
Read next: YouTube Is Testing To Integrate Google Search Results With Video Search In Its Mobile App
After view counts started to become suspect in terms of determining how successful a video was, view times also started to be taken into account. This is because of the fact that the amount of time that people watch videos matters quite a bit. If you only watch the first 30 seconds of a view before navigating away, this means that you probably didn’t enjoy the video very much. Hence, if a video has lots of views but most of those views involve people navigating away before they watch a significant portion of it, this would affect how successful YouTube would deem the video.
The reason behind why this matters is because of the fact that it impacts the YouTube algorithm. YouTube initially recommended widely watched videos, then started taking into account view times. However, even now there is a long way to go before the videos that you are recommended would actually be high in quality every single time, and this is basically why YouTube has started to look into Satisfaction, a term they are using to refer to a metric that gauges how much a video is genuinely enjoyed.
There are a number of factors that impact this metric. There is of course the amount of time that a viewer watched a video as well as whether or not they actually finished it. More importantly whether or not a user gave a video a Like is also taken into account because of the fact that watching a video all the way through does not mean that you necessarily enjoyed it, a like or a share is going to indicate that you genuinely thought that it did what you were hoping it would do.
Apart from this, according to Creator Insider, YouTube is also conducting surveys in order to directly ask users what their experience was like. This is important because of the fact that it can help YouTube genuinely ascertain the kind of enjoyment people are receiving from videos rather than relying on metrics that might be the result of other factors that are not directly tied to enjoyment in general.
All of these new metrics are going to contribute to the YouTube algorithm becoming a lot better in the long run. This is important because of the fact that it plays quite an important role in the kind of videos that you would end up seeing while you are checking out what YouTube has to offer.
Read next: YouTube Is Testing To Integrate Google Search Results With Video Search In Its Mobile App
