YouTube recommendations point to more popular content regardless of starting criterion Average number Fourth of views recommended video averaged Starting video 40.2 million views Starting averaged 8.1
This analysis also illustrates how the site’s recommendation engine steers users toward progressively more popular content as measured by view counts. Collectively, the starting videos in this analysis had an average of just over 8 million views. But the first videos recommended by the algorithm were much more popular, with nearly 30 million views on average. And videos in the final step in these walks had an average of more than 40 million views.
Although the magnitude of the effect is slightly different in each case, this general relationship held true regardless of whether the initial video was chosen based on date posted, view count, relevance or user rating. Even when starting on one of a channel’s five most recent videos (which average fewer than 2 million views) the recommendation algorithm consistently suggested more popular videos. By the fourth recommendation on walks starting from a channel’s most recent videos, viewers were recommended videos with an average of nearly 33 million views.
YouTube recommendations point to more popular  | content regardless of starting criterion  | Average number  | Fourth  | of views  | recommended  | video averaged  | Starting video  | 40.2 million views  | Starting averaged 8.1  | million views  | STARTING  | FIRST  | SECOND THIRD  | FOURTH  | VIDEO  | RECOMMENDED VIDEOS  | Average initial number video of  | The recommendation engine suggests increasingly  | Average views if initial video  | popular content no matter which criterion was  | was chosen  | used to select the starting video  | 52. 7M  | Based on view  | count  | 20. 5M  | 44.7M  | Based on  | relevance  | 9.1M  | 33.0M  | Based on date  | posted  | 1.8M  | 30.5M  | Based on  | rating  | 1.2M  | Source: Analysis of recommended videos collected via 174.117 five-step "random walks"  | beginning Analysis with videos posted to English-language public YouTube API YouTube Results channels five-step with at least 250, LOOD  | subscribers, performed using the public YouTube API Results include sonly those videos  | recommended by 18-Aug the YouTube algorithm, public and not the initial starting videos Data collection  | "Many performed July 18-Aug 29. 2018  | "Many Turn to YouTube 18-Aug for Children's Content, News How-To Lessons"  | PEW RESEARCH CENTER 