what if i told you that what everybody
is saying about youtube tags
is false because youtube tags
don't work and anybody that claims
otherwise
has clearly never tested it or has a
commercial motive. to
prove my claim I'm actually going to
test this
for you in this video. I'm also going to
share
some credible resources within youtube
itself
and an official public document in which
youtube states that tags don't work. And
if you stick around to the end I also
tell you
what youtube is using instead and why
my name is Dexxter Clark and with the
help of this youtube channel and my
website
socialvideoplaza.com I help
entrepreneurs explode their revenue with
the help of youtube
if you're new consider subscribing and
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when i upload a new video.
you can add tags to your youtube video a
tag is a piece of text
that describes the content of your video
you can add multiple tags to your video
as long as you stay within a character
limit of 500 characters
you want to add tags because it helps
the YouTube algorithm to understand what your
video is about
also it helps to determine the relevancy
between two videos
because two videos with similar tags are
about the same topic right?
at least that was the case until 2015
then youtube tags doomsday had arrived
 
okay let's dive into testing this stuff
so i'll test four scenarios the first
one uploading a video with absolutely no
tags
does it fail? adding a unique tag in a bad
performing video to test search
adding a tag in a good performing video
to test search if a bad performing video
doesn't work maybe a good performing
video will and adding a unique tag to
two well performing videos to test
relevancy
over here i have a video with no tags
in it and let's take a look at the
analytics okay the video
didn't perform very well 24 views and the last
48 hours
but you'll see also here that the
problem is the watch time
and not the tags okay
it's really hard to say if the video
would have performed better with
tags in it it's really hard to replicate
that
what is clear with this test result that
the video didn't
fall flat on its mouth okay let's test a
bad performing video and see if we add
the tag lkp whatever it makes unique
if that will turn up in youtube search
so let's copy this let's open a new tab
sheet
and let's type in this specific tag
it won't show up in search results
okay now let's try google because
google will find every little fart you
let go on the internet
so google the same tag
well it turns up
nothing really in particular yes the
social video plaza because i wrote an
article on the topic
with this same tag maybe a bad
performing video not but
let's take a look at a good performing
video then okay
i added the tag and that was already
weeks ago
l-o-p etc and
just to let you know that this is a
better performing video or a good
performing video with about
500 views per 48 hours
with a good average view duration so
youtube likes this video
now let's go to the youtube search
engine
and type in this tag and nothing
shows up let's type it in in google
and again a article
on socialvideoplaza.com my own website
this is a scammy site this is also a
scammy site and this is also a scammy
site
now let's test relevancy if there are
two tags
in two different videos they need to
show up next to each other
let's test this i added this tag
to this video secret formula now let's
go to another video
usb export rekordbox and here is the
same tag i wanted to make sure that
those video were
those videos were completely different
in topic
that the only thing that that would
connect them
is the tag so let's let's view this
video on youtube and
see if it shows up as a suggested video
you see here on the right a lot shows up
but not the arrangement video
not even further down the results
to be honest i didn't expect the video
to show up
because there are videos that are more
related to
this video than a music production video
what does youtube itself tell us about
tags let's take a look at the upload
flow
where are the tags well they are
here under more options totally hidden
away
from the mainstream upload flow hint
number two
in google go to google type in a search
query
and then over here sometimes you have a
box that says people ask also you can
extend this
and sometimes there are youtube videos
in there
youtube has a connection with google
and google knows exactly where
someone talks about this topic because
it says over
here from here to here
is the answer to your question
you might think okay this this video it
might have something
in the timestamps for example in the
description
but there are no timestamps in the
description tags
don't tell google or youtube where
certain information in the video is
timestamps could but there are no
timestamps in this video
i will go into more detail in a minute
on
how google and youtube know
where the question in your video is
answered the next
hint an internal video from youtube
itself
tags do they matter what should we put
in them
what are they for we do look at tags a
little bit but not as much as creators
think we do i would strongly encourage
everybody to spend
you know 99 of their metadata time on
the thumbnail
and title a little you know maybe half a
percent on that description
sometimes tags can be useful if uh
the content of your video or your
channel name is like commonly misspelled
and we haven't yet made that connection
based on
people searching for that and finding
your video otherwise
i wouldn't sweat it i think you're best
better spending your time on other
things
but i found two other videos that state
the same
thing i will link them in the
description below
let's go for the final nail in the coffin
the final
knockout for this myth i found an
official google
youtube document this states tags can be
useful
if the content of your video is commonly
misspelled
otherwise tags play a minimal role in
your video's discovery
ok if everybody thinks tags are still
important we can use this to
our advantage we can spy on the
competition
if we know which keywords are they using
we can target the same keywords or
just the other way around target other
keywords depending a little bit on the
amount of competition
okay so youtube itself says tags are not
relevant anymore but
what is youtube using then well
in 2015 youtube started adapting
google brain google brain is the
artificial intelligent algorithm that
google uses in their search engine
and google knows a thing or two about
search results
and the abuse of search results i think
that youtube is using a version
of the google cloud video intelligence
algorithm
you can go to cloud.google.com/video-intelligence
you can see a
demo of
what that thing does i will blur out the
video because i don't want to run into
some copyright
issues but you can see here are
labels dinosaur vehicle tree
land vehicle bicycle those are
the tags of a video
let's go to shots you see here
it assigns tags to every single frame of
the video
dinosaur tree we go a little bit back
dinosaur tree dinosaur vehicle tree
but when we go to the beginning of the
video: bicycle vehicle
sports bicycle frame sports equipment
cycling road bicycle
land vehicle. Tags have one inherent
weakness
they are put in by the user but they
don't have to be truthful they don't
have to
represent the content of the video very
well but
if an algorithm can determine exactly
what a video is about
why should they even use tags i think
we're in a transition phase in which
youtube phases out
tags gradually over the next couple of
weeks months or even years
i don't think that we still have tags in
five years and we can
finally say goodbye to this myth once
and for all
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