In fact, the average length of a video ranking on the first page of YouTube is 14 minutes, 50 seconds. Our data shows that longer videos tend to significantly outrank short videos. When it comes to video SEO, should you create short videos? Or are you better off with longer videos that cover a topic in-depth? Key Takeaway: Videos with lots of comments tend to rank best in YouTube. Considering YouTube’s emphasis on user engagement, this result isn’t a big surprise.

Needless to say, comments are a strong indicator that people are engaging with your video.īut does YouTube use comments as a ranking signal?Īs you can see in the chart above, the more comments a video has, the higher it tends to rank. YouTube encourages creators to publish videos that maximize engagement. Video Comments Have a Very Strong Correlation With Rankings I have detailed data and information of our findings below. 68.2% of videos on the first page of YouTube are in HD. HD videos dominate YouTube’s search results. We found zero correlation between keyword-optimized video descriptions and rankings.ġ1. Videos that contain an exact match keyword in their video title appear to have a slight edge over videos that don’t. This means that including a keyword in your title may improve your rankings by a slim margin.ġ0. This could represent the fact that YouTube can now understand video content without the help of metadata.ĩ. We found a very small relationship between keyword-rich video tags and rankings. Therefore, videos that result in new subscribers have an advantage in YouTube search.Ĩ. “Subscriptions driven” has reasonably strong correlation with rankings. Video likes are significantly correlated with higher rankings.ħ. This means that even small channels have a chance to rank their videos in YouTube.Ħ. There’s a moderate correlation between a channel’s subscriber size and rankings. The number of shares a video generates is strongly tied to first page YouTube rankings.ĥ. We discovered that video views have a significant correlation with rankings.Ĥ. The average length of a first page YouTube video is 14 minutes, 50 seconds.ģ. Longer videos significantly outperform shorter videos. We found that a video’s comment count strongly correlates with higher rankings.Ģ. Comments appear to be an influential ranking factor.

Here is a Summary of What We Discovered:ġ. Specifically, we looked at the correlation between ranking factors - like views, comments and shares - with YouTube rankings. We analyzed 1.3 million YouTube videos to better understand how YouTube’s search engine works.

Hd tag on youtube