Blog Post
How Viewers Find your YouTube Content
January 2, 2025
Thalia Ramirez

Discover What Works Best for Your YouTube Audience!

Knowing how viewers discover and engage with your content enables you to make posts that resonate with them and align with the platform’s priorities. While many creators focus on optimizing their content for search, it’s important to recognize that YouTube’s recommendation algorithm plays a much larger role in audience discovery. In fact, over 70% of what people watch on YouTube comes from recommendations, not search.


YouTube provides creators with a powerful tool called the “How Viewers Find You” feature. This feature offers detailed insights into the sources driving traffic to your videos, in other words ways in which your viewers found your channel/content. Let’s explore the value of this feature and how creators can implement it effectively to optimize their strategies.


First,

Access the Data

  1. Go to YouTube Studio.
  2. Navigate to the Analytics section.
  3. Click on the Content tab.
  4. Scroll down to the “How Viewers Find You” and click on See More.


Understanding the Format


When looking at your YouTube analytics you will see a breakdown of where your video views are coming from. Once you identify the sources it is easy to pinpoint what is driving your audience's engagement. It's one thing to see the numbers your content has produced and another to understand why you got those numbers.


Each source is broken down further with some important metrics to consider:


Impressions:  How many times did your thumbnails reach viewers?

Impressions Click-through Rate:  How often did your viewers watch a video by clicking on an impression?

Views:  What was the total number of views?

Average View Duration:  What was the average number of minutes watched per video?

Watch Time:  How many hours were spent watching your content?



There are a variety of metrics you can add depending on what you're interested in seeing, but these 5 give you a solid idea of which marketing efforts are successful, which ones need some work, and which ones aren't performing at all.

Let's Dig Deeper:

The goal is always to get as many views and impressions as possible. To do so, you want to focus on the traffic sources that are most popular.

  • YouTube Advertising

    This accounts for those who watched the ad all the way through, watched for at least 30 seconds, or engaged in the ad in some way; maybe by clicking on the link. 


    YouTube uses user-data to target ads to the right audience. This explains why when after googling you will often get ads related to your search. 


    Search history, watch history, location and device are all things the large data algorithm considers to find your viewers. 


    This commonly had the highest performing score of all the traffic sources among most of our clients, making YouTube ads worth investing in. 

  • Browse Feature

    This simply means people are finding your videos while browsing. 


    This does not include ads, end screens, or anything else that might pop up at them. Instead your viewers are actively browsing (hense the name) through your homepage, their subscriptions feed, or one of your playlists.  They could even be looking through their own list of videos they have saved to a "watch later" folder.


    The biggest reason this works is we heavily focus on our SEO (search engine optimization). Coming up with keywords in titles or descriptions that people aren't only going to search but that will stand out to them when deciding which video to watch. It's important to also make the thumbnails with large text and graphics to catch your audience's attention. 


    If your content aligns with the viewers preferences, videos might appear at the top when they browse through "recommended for you" or "trending" sections. 

  • YouTube Shorts

    Shorts are going to be vertical videos, usually 60 seconds or less in length, and are meant for quick and engaging content. 


    Our analytics showed that YouTube shorts gained a lot of traction overall.  It is so easy, especially for those who have the YouTube app, to click on the shorts icon in bottom bar and start scrolling. 


    Shorts are newer to YouTube so the short-form content might find a smaller niche than YouTube's usual audience with longer videos, but it will only grow in popularity. 


    It is also just a great way to get more content out. Getting it out quicker means more brand exposure!

  • Suggested Videos

    Because viewers are already looking at similar content this makes it more likely for them to watch your videos. 


    Adding relevant tags to your videos so that they are categorized with similar content is one way to optimize traffic. 


    Creating a series is another great way to increase your views. If a viewer liked one video, chances are they will watch the next listed in your series. 


    End screens will also help keep your viewers on your channel.

While YouTube Search is essential for connecting with highly motivated viewers who seek specific information, creators should not concentrate all their efforts solely on it. View durations tend to be shorter when traffic originates from search, as viewers are inclined to click through multiple videos in search of the exact content they need. Dedicated audiences and greater engagement stem from traffic sources that YouTube’s algorithm actively recommends to viewers.


A staggering 98% of videos on YouTube fail to attract any views. If you’re finding it challenging to unlock your channel’s potential, it’s key to recognize that the most effective strategies across all sources emphasize SEO and consistency. By grabbing the audience's attention with eye-catching thumbnails and compelling titles, you increase the chances of them clicking on your video. Consistent and frequent uploads create more opportunities for YouTube to showcase your content to viewers. These strategies can be customized to fit each traffic source, enhancing your channel’s success.




Check out our blog on YouTube for Social Media Marketing to learn more on the importance and practices of SEO work. And if you want to know how else we can help, take a look at Marketing Angle Digital Marketing Services.

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