I happened to come across something interesting while doing a search (sorted by most recent) on YouTube.
I noticed multiples of the same video content. Searching by the default (relevant) search filter often times brought me to the original video which told me the ones showing up via the recent filter, were effectively spam accounts attempting to capitalize on the original video.
It seems like the ones doing this aren’t really aware of how YouTube’s backend algorithms work. YouTube’s system is like any other analytics based algorithms where it’s about the numbers. But it’s not just about any one single number as opposed to the metrics behind certain key numbers. The system works very well for the largest YouTube content creators because each metric acts in synergy with the other (subs, channel views, video watched time, comments to a lesser extent) relevancy and therefore, getting to the top which helps to drive recognition and therefore views.
These backend algorithms know how long a viewer stays on a page with that video (or watching an embedded video which from what I know, does not result in an actual increment of the number of video views on the actual page, but is accounted for in watched times). A hit and run view bot may help to drive up the number of views but those algorithms will see a discrepancy between those view numbers and average amount of time spent viewing that clip. Something similar happens with artificially inflated subscriber numbers on a channel. All of these metrics work in concert with each other and watched length discrepancies will not allow those videos to appear high in relevancy searches or when it comes to recommended content. Basically, those type of videos will drop to the bottom meaning they will be found mainly via the recent search filter.
This isn’t to say recent search is useless; it is useful when searching for more obscure content. But when it comes to highly viewed content, it is expected to see duplicates appear from these accounts attempting to monetize that content. You see this often now with the fake live stream ones for concert events.
Myself, I never created a YouTube channel for the purpose of monetization. I created it to have a repository for stuff I mainly wanted to share with people I know (use for my blogs which are also unmonetized). Thus there is no production time put into anything. But I know that the top content producers put in a lot of work because I have done that before for side jobs. It can take hours of footage which needs to be ingested and categorized. /reviewed where it may take hours of editing with effects and transitions added. A seemingly short 5 minute produced clip might have hours of work behind it.
So I have zero expectations of seeing any sort of high numbers of subscribers, views, and comments on this channel. Yet, it was pointed out to me recently that I’ve almost reached 125,000 channel views for doing almost zero production work. That’s a drop in the bucket compared to big channels but still far above the average. My channel as expected doesn’t have a lot of subscribers or commenters either which probably throws YouTube’s algorithms and metrics off since the majority of views/watch time comes from non-channel subs. The majority of that is from Diablo III game play footage (not even guides but just stupid game play) mostly from before Reaper of Souls. I felt that was worth mentioning because there is a segment already waxing nostalgic for that older non-rifting game.
The other relevant reason I bring this up is to illustrate how difficult it is for those who do want to create actual YouTube content that can be monetized. These people will need to start from a very small base where all of these metrics need to line up in order for that content to climb up to top where it has a chance of showing up in recommendations (you know how many of us end up in those other parts of YouTube far from where we started). They will need to create content that based on their length, are watched through at least more than half the way (by that, I mean staying on the page while the video is playing). This is also why it is better to have organic subscriber growth by those who are actually interested in following the channels content. Having a lot of subs that don’t actually view a lot of the content can work against them early on.
It’s like any business endeavor. It takes time and effort unless you get lucky with a viral hit. There are a ton of niches that one could get involved in but requires knowing your audience and putting together quality content. That’s why the spam accounts that try to simply upload other peoples videos over and over again to try and monetize them on their own, doesn’t work.
