In this article, we break down the YouTube algorithm according to YouTube insiders and share tips for applying this knowledge to your videos.

There are billions of videos on YouTube on, quite possibly, every topic you could think of (and others not even on your radar). You could learn how to cook or code, take a tour of tiny houses or millionaires’ mansions, watch gamers try to reach the Death Star in Fortnite … the list is endless.

Yet every time I open the app, YouTube shows me what I'm most interested in — music, makeup, and motorsports.

It’s easy to see how much content there is on the platform, and how well YouTube seems to know me. What’s harder to understand is how YouTube decides which of the billions of videos I might want to watch.

How does the YouTube algorithm know what to recommend? And why do some videos go viral seemingly overnight, while others take a bit more time to find their audience?

I decided to find out. 

In this article, I’ll break down how the YouTube algorithm works according to YouTube insiders and share tips for how to apply this knowledge to your YouTube videos. 

In a nutshell: There’s no gaming the YouTube algorithm, but there are definitely some ways to work with it as a YouTube creator. 

If you’re not interested in the technicalities and want specific, practical things you can do right now to help grow your channel and get more views, skip right to the tips section at the end.

What is the YouTube algorithm?

The YouTube algorithm is the behind-the-scenes system that decides which videos YouTube users see when they open the app. It powers recommendations across the platform and plays a big role in whether your videos get discovered.

Like other social media algorithms, the YouTube algorithm helps each particular viewer find content they’re likely to enjoy based on a range of signals from watch history to likes and dislikes.

There are two ways for YouTube users to discover your videos on the platform:

1. Recommended content — videos that appear on the homepage, suggested videos that show up next to what someone’s watching, and in the YouTube Shorts feed.
2. Other content — videos viewers find through search and in the trending videos tab.

These aren’t all driven by a single algorithm. Much like the Instagram algorithm, YouTube has different algorithms for each place in the platform that viewers can discover videos. Each one uses its own mix of signals to figure out how valuable a video is to that viewer and what content users want to see more of. 

Let's unpack how the algorithms in these distinct areas work.

YouT

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