YouTube just made the biggest algorithm change in over a decade. And while most creators are panicking about losing views over it, this is actually the best thing that's ever happened for your business. If you're already using YouTube to get clients or you wanna start, this update was basically built for you, if you know how to lean into it. So today, I'm gonna break down exactly what changed, why YouTube now favors the kind of videos that actually get you clients,
and I'll give you the exact playbook to make sure that your content lands on the right side of the update. Alright. Before we get to the big change, let's start with the one that everyone's losing their minds over. Because once you see what YouTube actually did here, you're gonna realize it's not as much a problem as a secret opportunity. So back in 2016,
this is what your YouTube homepage looked like. Six videos across,
five rows deep, you're looking at about 30 thumbnails all competing for your attention
at the same time. By 2020, it dropped to four across.
Still a wall of options, still pretty chaotic. And now, we're down to three. We got a row of three long form videos,
then a row of shorts,
another row of three more shorts, and so on. YouTube's hand selecting a small number of videos per person based on their watch history. Not just throwing 30 options at someone and hoping that they pick yours out of a hat. And that top row, that's almost always gonna be videos from creators you've already watched. Keep that in the back of your mind for now. We're gonna come back to it. Now a lot of creators are pretty upset about the new design. Fewer long form slots,
short seating up homepage space.
But both of those things are actually good for the ones who know how to exploit these changes, and here's why. Fewer slots is a good thing. There's a pretty famous study from back in the day that gave one group of shoppers 24 different types of jam to choose from, and another group, they only gave them six types. Now, the group with fewer options was 10 times more likely
to actually choose anything at all. They call this the paradox of choice. So when your video shows up on someone's homepage now,
there's way less noise competing with it. They're not scanning that wall of 30 thumbnails. They're looking at three options that YouTube already thinks they'll like. And what about the Shorts, Rose? Well, they're not the problem people think they are because long form viewers who want longer videos are just gonna scroll right past them. The same way that you scroll past a genre that you would never watch on Netflix without thinking about it. People know how to scroll. So now the obvious question is, how do you make sure that your video gets into one of those open slots? That's what the rest of this video is all gonna be about. So there are some big things that the algorithm is now looking for in your videos
that just so happen
to be perfectly aligned with what's gonna grow your business. Let's start with thumbnails. Now this is what used to work when your thumbnail was the size of a postage stamp competing with 29 others. Everything had to be loud just to be seen, but here's what works now. Real,
clean. Your face is clearly visible. Maybe a short counterintuitive statement
or a visual that hints at a story. Loud got replaced by thoughtful and interesting. And for business channels, that's a gift because
interesting is what gets clients.
Nobody's gonna be booking a discovery call because your thumbnail had the brightest yellow background on the page. And speaking of getting clients, I do have a free hour long master class that's gonna show you everything that your channel needs to be able to attract and convert way more of them, and the link for that is down below in the description if you wanna sign up for it. Okay. So your title and your idea also matter more than ever now. Titles are more prominent, and the concept behind your video carries more weight because YouTube has fewer slots to fill and needs each one to land. Now everything I've shown you so far is that surface level change, the stuff you can see on screen. But underneath all that,
YouTube made a much bigger shift that changes how every new video gets judged by the algorithm. I like to think of this as the difference between how Uber used to make money versus how it does now. So way back in the day, they charged you based on distance and time. Right? And you wouldn't know what it cost until the ride was over. The longer that that driver took to get you there, the more they earned. So some drivers took the long way on purpose Until Uber noticed that passengers who felt like their time and their money was being wasted
stopped Ubering places. So they changed over to preset pricing.
The whole point was to increase rider satisfaction,
not how long they were sitting in the car. Well, YouTube just did the exact same thing. Now, for over a decade,
YouTube rewarded
watch time above everything. Right? The longer someone stayed on your video,
the more YouTube pushed it out. So creators learned how to game it. They would stretch a six minute idea into twenty minutes of padding and throw in artificial cliffhangers,
anything to keep you on the scenic route as long as possible. And just like Uber, YouTube realized it was killing the overall session time that people were spending watching videos. So YouTube changed the metric. It's not just about how long you watched,
but how did you feel about watching. Did you actually enjoy it? Would you come back? Did you feel like your time was well spent? And they track this through things like surveys, likes, shares, return visits,
and, you know, positive versus negative comments. You can't see the score in your dashboard, but it's definitely running behind the scenes on everything you post. So what does this actually mean for your videos? Well, a focused eight minute video that completely solves someone's problem now outperforms
that bloated twenty minute version
that people are gonna shut off halfway through. So if you're a business owner making content that teaches real stuff, that actually helps people and respects their time, you just went from being penalized by the algorithm
to being exactly what it's looking for. This is the first time where the algorithm and the content that gets clients have been fully aligned. And a big part of how YouTube measures satisfaction
is whether your video actually has something new to say. Because if someone clicks your video and it feels like they've seen this exact take three times already this week, that's not a satisfying experience. That's a waste of their time. And that's where a lot of business owners are gonna really need to rethink their content strategy.
Because that old playbook that every YouTube guru teaches that says, you know, find a proven video in your niche and then make your version of it is now pretty much the best way to get buried alive. And YouTube's own engineers gave us a really good explanation
about how they look at videos for freshness. The new algorithm tags every video with eight unique tokens. So let's look at this example video from Jasmine Delucci,
why choosing between an LLC and an s corp is costing you money, and we'll we'll see how this works. Token one is the category. Right? This is the most top level, and it's pretty much either gonna be entertainment or in this case, education.
Token two is the niche. In this case, it's business. Token three is the subniche,
tax strategy.
Token four is the subject. Here it's LLC
versus s corp. Token five is the format. Now I would call this a comparison style video. Token six is the style. I would say this is a talking head with graphics.
And a lot of videos could be made of these same six tokens, but these next two are the ones that the algorithm really focuses on. Token seven identifies the actual idea
and content in her video. In other words, it's the actual information, her examples, her opinions, her stories,
point of view, and her ultimate recommendation.
And token eight is what they call the signature. This is her speaking style, her face, her background, graphics, music, everything that sets her video apart from another video
even if it you were to use the exact same script. Now, this video actually did pretty well within the new algorithm, so we can assume
that she had some new ideas and new takes that YouTube hadn't really seen before. In this particular case, she goes against the grain and her advice is that you don't really have to choose between an LLC or an s corp. You can have both. So when this happens and YouTube identifies a new idea,
they draw a circle around that video. They call this the conflict radius. And this video owns that territory now. If you were to copy her video,
it would land right inside her conflict radius.
Same idea, same angle, same examples. And guess what? YouTube is gonna limit how many people ever see it. And the closer you get to the center of her conflict radius, meaning the closer it comes to her video,
the worse your chances are of YouTube ever showing your video to anybody. The more you can differentiate it, the more it moves away from the center and your odds start to go up. But if you were to bring enough of a new angle, right, a different story or information
that that video didn't cover,
you can land outside the circle. And then YouTube draws a new one around yours.
You claim your own territory and then YouTube pushes you because you're giving the viewer something they haven't gotten yet. So how do you make sure that all your videos always land inside your own circle? Well, there are four ways to do it. The first is to remix, not copy. Most people here make your take on a proven topic and then they go find one successful video
and they basically remake it with their face on it. That's not a take. That's a knockoff and YouTube is gonna catch it. Instead, you wanna find like two or three proven videos on the same topic. Watch all of them, pull the best insight from each one, then combine those pieces into something that none of them set on their own. You're not copying one source anymore. You're remixing
three. And that combination
can create something that the algorithm treats as genuinely new. The second way is the most powerful differentiator that you have and it's all about teaching from your scars,
not from a script. And when I say scars, I mean your own hard won experiences and takes that only you have because no one else has lived your life. This is what I call the SCAR scale and it's the four levels of content that you can make starting from the shallowest
to the deepest.
S is for surface. You know, these are your pure information videos.
This could be a video called LLC versus s corp. What's the difference? It's the Google able layer that ChatGPT can answer perfectly in thirty seconds. C is for competence. Think of this like how does it actually work in practice. You know, a tax strategist
walking you through exactly how to file as an s corp step by step on screen. It's better than the surface level because you're showing, not just telling. But any qualified accountant could give the same walkthrough. So those first two levels are very unlikely to land you in your own circle, but here's where it starts to get good. A is for adversity.
These videos answer the question,
what happens when the common advice doesn't work? This is the tax strategist who says, I had a client come to me after choosing an LLC based on advice from another video. She was overpaying by $11 a year in self employment tax, and I've seen this exact mistake probably 50 times now. And finally, r is for reframe. This is why what everyone thinks about this is completely wrong, and that's where Jasmine's video landed. Right? She said, you don't actually have to choose between an LLC and an s corp. You can have both, And obsessing over which one to pick is the thing that's costing you money. That's not just a tip. That's a complete reframe of how someone thinks about their business structure. And it takes years of seeing that same mistake play out to be able to earn that perspective. So if your content lives at the top levels,
you have competition everywhere. But if your content lives down here,
nobody can touch you because nobody else has your scars.
And your scars are the one thing that will never land inside someone else's circle. Now the third way to create information gain in your videos is to report the news. So whenever news breaks in any niche, there's a short window where the demand spikes
and the supply is almost zero. So if you're fast enough to get a video out in that window,
information gain is basically guaranteed
because no one has covered it yet. I remember last year when ChatGPT five was about to be released, it was a really big deal and I knew that it was coming out any day now. So I was ready to just drop everything when it did and get a video out as soon as I could. And that's exactly what I did. I remember I worked that whole Saturday to get it out on time. And was I the first to the party? No. But I was still able to capitalize on it because I had an interesting angle that hadn't really been covered yet at that point. And guess what? That was my top viewed video of the whole year. And don't worry, you don't need to turn into a news channel.
You just need to be fast enough to be the first in your niche to break a story once in a while. And you can even just set up an AI agent like ChatGPT or Claude or whatever you like to send you a daily briefing on anything news related in your niche. Then you just look at it every morning, and if something looks big enough,
jump on it. But here's the thing. If you're gonna do it this way,
don't do the whole thing where you write a script. Don't overthink the production. You know, write out some quick notes, turn on the camera, and just get your take out there. Unpolished is completely fine for news videos because speed is the whole point here. And the fourth way is what I call the AI twist. So if your niche can be paired with AI in any way at all, you're sitting on a massive gap right now. AI as a topic is still huge and it's also a great way to differentiate yourself. Think about a therapist talking about AI therapy or a web designer reviewing AI website builders. A financial advisor
testing AI portfolio management. You know, these videos barely exist in most niches. And every time that there's a major AI update,
you get a free excuse to make a fresh version of it. That's built in information gain on repeat. Now remember earlier when I told you that the top row of the homepage
is almost always gonna show videos from people you've already watched. So this is where everything comes together.
Once someone watches one of your videos and has a satisfying experience,
YouTube puts you in a very small group of creators
that can show up in that person's top row next time they open the app. And every video you make using these principles
earns you a seat at the table for that viewer. There's only one catch. Right? You have to get them to watch you that first time. Until someone's seen one of your videos,
you don't exist on their homepage. So none of these algorithm advantages kick in until you get that first view. So how do you get that first view? By taking advantage of YouTube's other algorithm search. So when someone types in a question or a problem into YouTube search bar and your video is properly optimized to show up for that exact thing,
that's your front door. That's how a complete stranger finds you, watches you for the first time, and triggers the whole homepage loop that we just talked about. And I do go into exactly how to make this work for you in my free sixty minute master class, how to attract unlimited clients from YouTube. So click right here to watch that on demand or whenever works for you this week. So click right here and I cannot wait to show you this stuff. I'll see you over there.