It's a huge YouTube issue. >> The algorithm is not working. The YouTube algorithm has changed.
Something's a bit weird on YouTube. >> YouTube currently has a huge problem on the platform and it is a problem that is affecting everyone. >> You're not crazy.
YouTube have made some big changes and I have data from over 500 channels to prove it. See, recently more and more creators have been talking about their views going down for no apparent reason. And this isn't one of those your content sucks, get good situations.
My channel was averaging 150k views per video. Now I'm stuck at around 60k a video. Quality is the same.
Nothing is different. Another comment I saw, I've been doing YouTube for 10 years, almost at a million subscribers, and this is the first time in all that time I've noticed a significant sustained drop in views. I used to average 1 to 10k views per video.
Now I'm lucky to get 20 views. And they're not alone. Even the biggest creators are suffering.
Valo. co code shows the top 100 YouTubers combined views went down over 50% in just one week. So, what's caused all this?
Did the algorithm change? Is YouTube going to pull a vine? Or is it something else entirely?
Well, contrary to popular belief, after looking at the data, I don't believe these view drops were caused by YouTube restricted mode, AI slop, ad blocker not counting views, or even seasonal trends. Sure, ad block and seasonality did have some effects, but I think I found the two biggest reasons so many creators views have actually gone down and feels like nobody's talking about it. So, let me explain.
Quick context. I work with a lot of creators. Usually, they give me access to their channels.
And so, when I started hearing about creators and even entire niches getting significantly less views, I started exploring the analytics of the 500 plus channels I have access to. And what I found has honestly made me a bit scared for the future of YouTube. So what I did was I exported all the data from these channels I had access to and created this graph which overwhelmed data lines.
I get it. But this graph is actually one of the keys to uncovering where these view drops have been coming from. It shows the combined amount of views being generated by shorts across over 500 channels I have access to.
Each colored line represents a different traffic source. So for example, the purple line represents the amount of people clicking on shorts they see in the search results. the pink purpleish line.
I know I'm an artist. That shows the amount of viewers clicking on shorts they see in their homepage. Now, let's just follow these lines for a bit.
If we come back here to 2024, you can see that both the pink and pinkish purple line are relatively low. And this tells us not as many shorts were being promoted in search or on the YouTube homepage. But then in early 2025, you can see they start to go up.
They get particularly high in April and May before dropping down a tad and stabilizing here. And here's what I want you to look at. Notice how much higher these lines are here where we are now compared to where they were back in 2024.
It's roughly double. And what this seems to be telling us is YouTube is promoting shorts on viewers homepages and in search much more than it used to. But what does this have to do with creators views going down?
Well, let's go back in time for a sec. Take a look at this. This is what your typical YouTube homepage looked like back in 2024.
So, this is back here when the pink and purple lines were flatter. You can see two rows of long form videos with five videos per row. So, a total of 10 long form videos being promoted.
And then below that, we have a row of shorts. Now, let's fast forward a bit and see what YouTube looks like around the beginning of 2025. You can see we've gone from two rows of five long form videos to two rows of three long form videos.
And if we fast forward to the present, this is what the typical YouTube homepage looks like. And I've looked at a bunch of different screenshots from different users in Australia, Asia, US, Europe, and they almost always all seem to have one row of two to three long form videos, and then this grossly obese row of shorts taking up the entire rest of the screen. And this isn't just something that's happening on desktop homepages.
If you load up YouTube on your mobile, usually the first thing you'll see is a fat block of shorts taking up your entire screen. And also, when you use YouTube search, the amount of shorts that now show up is staggering. But the thing is, there's only so much space on viewers screens.
So, for YouTube to be able to promote these extra shorts, they had to cut back on the amount of long- form videos they're promoting to viewers. Now, you would think this makes shorts views go up across the board while long form views go down. But from the data I'm seeing, what actually seems to be happening is the overall amount of views being generated by long form videos across the platform isn't really taking a hit.
probably because of reduced decision fatigue. But the diversity of where those views are going is. See, if you're a creator, instead of fighting for one out of 10 available slots on the homepage like back in 2024, you're now fighting for one out of two to three available spots.
And so naturally, less videos make the cut. And so views aren't getting distributed to as many middle-class creators. But what can you actually do about this?
Well, before I can get into that, we need to go over the second big thing I found. See, you might look at these changes. the number of available long- form video spots on the homepage decreasing.
And think, well, this isn't going to affect big creators. Beast, Robbo, Treyan, YouTube's Golden Boys. Surely they're not going to see a drop in views cuz their videos are definitely going to claim one of these top spots, right?
Well, interestingly, from the data I mentioned earlier, it seems like big creators are experiencing view drops, too. But where are their views going? Well, a while back, I was talking to my bald YouTube wizard friend Mario, and he noticed something interesting.
See, Mario works with some of the biggest creators in the world. And when he looked at their analytics and specifically looked at views coming from older shorts, he noticed that particularly around September views coming from older shorts seemed to go through the floor. Now, when I heard this, I talked to one of my other friends and he showed me this graph.
And the data here shows views coming from older shorts posted by the top 100 YouTubers. And again, you can see this very steep decline, particularly around September where it seems like all the old shorts on these channels are just getting promoted less. So, it seems like YouTube have adjusted their algorithm to have a recency bias.
Basically, taking more views away from older content and allocating it to newer content. But where does all this leave us and what does it mean for the future of YouTube? Well, a bunch of things have happened.
We've had the seasonality trends of people going back to school, the ad block issues where YouTube wasn't able to count views for some desktop users. But from what I'm seeing, the two biggest issues are one, less screen real estate being allocated to long- form videos in favor of shorts, and two, older shorts dying off and getting less views than newer ones. And here's what's concerning about all of this.
See, I was just at the Tik Tok awards. I met a super talented Tik Tocker, 600K followers, getting tens of millions of views, and she was still working a full-time job while living with her parents. Now, I'm not sharing this to shame her.
I'm sharing this to illustrate a problem. 80 to 90% of the short form creators I meet are starving artists. They all talk about how jealous they are of long- form creators.
Short form content is just so much less sustainable. The ad revenue sucks. The conversion rates terrible.
Sponsors won't pay as much for it. And in the past, we've seen extreme versions of what can happen when content creation becomes less sustainable. Platforms like Vine didn't die because viewers stopped watching.
They died because creators got sick of getting millions of views while still struggling to make ends meet. Now, I've spent hours talking with YouTube, and my impression is they are genuinely good people. Mostly, they're trying to tune the algorithm to reverse engineer what viewers want to watch.
But if YouTube chooses to chase short-term metrics at the expense of long-term creator middle-class sustainability, the system starts to break. See, if we look 5 10 years down the line, the next generation of innovators, the people going to push YouTube forward and do things we've never seen before, the next Beast, Robot, Treyan, that creator is somewhere out there right now. But if YouTube becomes a platform where more and more creators have to work three times as hard for 50% of what they're currently getting, the chances of those creators quitting skyrockets.
That's not good. It hurts the diversity and innovation that keeps YouTube fresh. And we know that freshness is something viewers care about, too.
If someone watching this has better data than me, feel free to reach out. I would love to be proven wrong here. But from what I'm seeing, essentially, it seems like older shorts are getting a lot less views than they once were and less digital real estate being allocated to long- form videos on the search page and homepage, particularly your desktop and mobile.
So, what do we do from here? Well, if you're a creator and you just care about getting more views, you don't really care about sustainability, I think now is a good time to be posting shorts. Competition for long form slots is getting tougher, particularly in certain niches.
So, if you want to get views on your long form videos, the tough love here is you're just going to have to up your game. But at the same time, if you or any creators you know have been experiencing these view drops, please share this video, post it on Twitter, tag YouTube. I know Todd, I know Renee, they are good people.
And if they notice enough creators struggling with this, they will probably quietly make changes or at the very least make sure this doesn't go too far. So please, let's try to get this message out. And if you are a creator who's struggling right now, keep going.
It does seem like the game has gotten a bit tougher for some of us, but it's far from over and there's still plenty of time to turn things around. Thanks for watching.
