Lately we’ve been going pretty hard on Google. Temperamental core updates on Search are resulting in website publishers losing traffic and having to shut down their businesses. Techniques advised against by Google themselves, such as writing to manipulate search engine rankings, don’t appear to have a detrimental effect (of course, you have to be a big brand publisher to get away with it). Dry, useless AI-generated content appears to rank well in many cases and throwing money at the problem by purchasing backlinks, a big ‘no-no’ according to Google, tends to be rewarded.
But what about YouTube? Much like its parent company’s search capabilities, YouTube search kinda sucks too. While YouTube is often referred to as one of the largest search engines in the world, it falls short on quality of results because of the dreaded ‘recommendation’ algorithm. According to YouTube, with over 500 hours of content uploaded onto the platform every minute, finding what you need would be nearly impossible without some help. This ‘help’, however, is presumptuous, thinking it knows you better than you know yourself.
Do a search on YouTube and you might find some videos relevant to what you searched for. But as you scroll down the list of search results, you’ll likely find videos that are completely unrelated to your search query. There’s the recommendation algorithm doing its work. Forget about what you searched for! We’ve got something else. You’ll enjoy it a lot more. This attitude is one that’s become synonymous with social media platforms and reminiscent of Instagram’s major algorithm update in 2018. Causing considerable backlash, Instagram decided to change the main feed from a chronological timeline of posts to one that displayed posts that were algorithmically determined to be of content you supposedly liked.
In some cases, you can see a tenuous connection between what you search for and the recommended videos served up by the algorithm. Take, for example, the search term “Why does YouTube suck”. Perhaps emotionally hurt by a user asking such a question, one of the results is a video by Think Media titled “Your Videos SUCK”. Maybe this is YouTube’s way of saying we don’t suck, you do!
Another video recommendation is Minecraft Bedrock Sucks. Ah, the old bait and switch technique! The algo is being clever here. It’s not YouTube search that sucks. It’s something else!
In fairness to YouTube, it’s not entirely bad. If a creator takes a look at their analytics, they can see fairly relevant search terms for their long-form content. Take, for example, a video interview we did a while back about someone who stopped watching WWE. The viewers who came through search are pretty much on point, with queries such as “why i stopped watching wrestling” and “why i stopped watching wwe”.
It’s when we look at YouTube Shorts that things are all over the place. Take, for example, our Shorts video about what’s going on with Google (below). The top search terms are “basketball tutorial for beginners”, “how to get a tesla for cheap” and “ice cream thinknoodles”. While of course creators want their videos to be watched, it’s probably not the best experience for someone looking for a basketball tutorial to get served a video about Google’s algorithm.
Ultimately it looks like we need to follow the money. YouTube search likely sucks because of revenue considerations. It’s probably also a factor why large creators seem to be treated differently to small creators. YouTube wants to keep people on YouTube. How many times have people fallen down the rabbit hole, searching for something, stumbling onto something entirely different and spending a lot more time on the app? While not the best outcome if you need quick and easy info, it’s great for YouTube, who’s got you to engage with new content and to watch some ads. In answer to the question, “Why does YouTube search suck?”, it’s because it’s meant to suck.
