Google Explains How YouTube Search Works

Google Explains How YouTube Search Works

Google Explains How YouTube Search Works
Google explains how YouTube search works in a new resource dedicated to the inner workings of the video-sharing platform. As part of a larger effort to explain how YouTube works, Google published a new resource to answer commonly asked questions about YouTube search results.


The Search Engine Journal recently reported on some of the respective highlights from different sections related to search and discovery.

YouTube Search
YouTube’s search ranking system sorts through over 500 hours of content uploaded every minute to find the most relevant results for a query.

YouTube Search prioritizes these three main elements when ranking its search results:
> Relevance
> Engagement
> Quality

Here’s more detail about each of these elements.

YouTube’s ranking algorithm looks at many factors when determining relevance.
Without getting too specific, YouTube points out factors such as the title, tags, description, and video content itself.

YouTube’s search algorithm incorporates aggregate engagement signals from users, such as the watch time of a particular video for a particular query.
The company notes that engagement signals are a valuable way to determine relevance as well.

To determine quality, YouTube uses signals that should be very familiar to search marketers.

Expertise, authoritativeness, and trustworthiness are also known amongst search marketers as EAT. It should be familiar because Google emphasises the importance of these signals for its search results as well.

Other Factor: Personalization
In addition to the above three main factors, YouTube also tries to determine relevancy for each user by taking into account a user’s search and watch history.

It’s not uncommon for search results to differ from one user to another for the same query. “For example, if you watch a lot of sports videos and search for “cricket,” we might recommend videos featuring the sport cricket rather than nature videos with crickets in them.”

YouTube search and watch history can be cleared at any time, in which case YouTube’s search results will not take these signals into account.

Raising authoritative sources
YouTube makes a point of mentioning that it prioritizes content from authoritative sources when it’s appropriate to do so. This can include categories of content such as news, politics, and medical or scientific information.

In those areas, credibility is key. In other areas, such as music or entertainment, YouTube is more likely to look at signals like relevance, freshness, or popularity.