If nobody is clicking on your videos, at some point, you've probably wondered, YouTube, are you actually showing these to the right people? So I actually asked. I used YouTube's own AI Ask Studio to audit my channel's data, and the answer was yes. YouTube was showing my videos to the completely wrong audience. So now I am showing you those exact reports so you can audit your own channel, plus the three step fix to finally point the algorithm to the right audience. Now when you hit publish, YouTube has no idea who wants to watch your videos. So for the first forty eight to seventy two hours, it is seeding out your videos to various audience groups to basically just see who bites. So if you look in your impressions graph, you'll see a bunch of spikes. That's seeding. It's basically you two acting like a detective but with no clues. So our job is to give the detective better clues so it can find the right rooms, the right audiences,
but how do we even know that we're giving it the right clues? Now this is the first report you are going to do. I want you to pick a video that didn't perform well, and you're gonna go into its analytics. So I'm gonna do
this one here. You're gonna go analytics,
reach.
You're gonna scroll down until the
content suggesting
this video section, and then click see more.
I want to show you who
YouTube what other videos YouTube was recommending my content next to. Why the declining birth rate is none of Gen z's business?
Clearly,
related to content creation,
0% click through rate. Not surprised there. Nobody's pretty in person anymore.
Oh, I got two views. I got a 1.2
click through rate there. For the guy who accidentally abandoned his woman to die in the Alps,
I got three
views from that
with a average view duration of thirty one seconds.
So clearly, the people interested in that were not interested in my content. The Love Island slop has taken over TikTok.
I got a one view from there, and they stayed for twenty three seconds. Almost instantly,
I can see YouTube had no idea who this video was meant for. It was just pairing it beside
literally
the most random assortment of videos.
But if they watch video a and it's on
just marrying your son already,
people
aren't gonna click on video b. Like,
they see my video b being recommended, and they're like, no. That's not for me. That's not for me. Prefer other things. So if three out of this top five suggested videos have nothing to do with your niche,
you have not given the detective enough clues yet. So the system reads it as nobody wants to watch your video.
But, really, it's just the Love Island people don't wanna watch my video. This is our next report. So pick another video and go into its analytics.
So I'm gonna do this one here.
And I want you to go into
reach. Tap.
And first, we'll pause here for a second because I wanna I wanna explain something.
This click through rate number that you see
is not actually a single number. It is a combined
click through rate of the various traffic sources because every traffic source on YouTube has its own separate click through rates. And the mismatch
and why you're not getting a good click through rate often lies in the gap between those sources. Now I'm gonna scroll down into the how viewers find this video section and click see more.
Now this is where we're gonna find the data that we're looking for. If we look right here, we'll see that our my browse click through rate is 8.1%.
That's really good. That means that my title and my thumbnail were working
for people who knew me, who knew the type of content. But if you look at the suggested
videos click through rate, 1.9%.
That's not good. Right? Like, that's a huge difference.
So what does that mean? Suggested is YouTube trying to find me new people.
And at 1.9%,
well,
I don't think the people that's finding me are the right people because they're clearly not clicking on my videos. So a high browse and a low suggested means that existing fans are loving it, but YouTube's struggling trying to find new fans. I am not giving YouTube enough
clues on this video to help it find new audiences.
And there, you can clearly see how
the click through rate is the combined average of all these sources,
and suggested is at the very bottom. The last report I want you to look at. Good. Pick a video, go into the analytics,
click on reach,
and then click on the impressions click through rate tab.
And I want you to look at this graph here
or chart.
Is it a chart?
It's a line. What you're looking at is as your impressions are getting higher,
your average click through rate is gonna start dropping because that means it is ceding it to more and more
newer viewers, more and more different audiences.
So if we look at this chart from the click through rate, it's all over the place. So some audiences are really high, some are really low.
And when you get these, like, zigzags
that are kind of all over the place, you know that YouTube is having a really hard time trying to figure out who your audience is. Some click through rates are 6.8%,
Some are 2.2.
There's a 1.8,
a 5.1.
A more steady line
means that YouTube is having more success finding your audience. A sleep steep slide down or this ziggy zaggy means it's it's it's struggling, and it's getting it wrong. It's getting it right, and it's getting it wrong. So I asked YouTube's AI the obvious next question.
What do I actually do to change this? How can I improve my suggested video click through rate? And it came back with three fixes, and I want you to notice that not one of them has anything to do with the thumbnail.
They were all related to the title,
just telling YouTube exactly who the video was for. So the first fix it recommended was to cut fake words and just name the actual thing
that we're talking about. So what does this mean? No tips, tricks, secrets, hacks, growth. Like, what does growth even mean? Growth could mean, like,
growing a garden, growth in stocks, growth in hair, personal growth.
It's so vague. Like, it names the action, but not the actual thing that we're growing. So a title like skin care tips and tricks becomes
the double cleanse routine for oily skin. More specific. Right? So our second fix is to stop making the title only about you and name who it's for. And we wanna be careful here because the trap isn't in the words like my, me, I.
I know I use those a lot in my titles. The fact that there is no signal for who else
would be interested in this. There are two ways that we could do this. The first is you can name it outright. Now my video, I'm tired of seeing small channels fail,
literally says small channels. Right? Like, that's the label. It's it's pretty obvious. The second way that you do this is by placing them by their situation.
My first thirty days on YouTube. I never say this is for new creators in the title, but if you've only been on YouTube for thirty days, then
that would mean that I'm a new creator. This is for new creators. So it it kind of, like, situationally
applies it there. Both of these count, and what flops is a title that does neither of them. Like, my workout routine
tells me nothing. Who are you? Why do I care about your workout routine? My go to workout for total beginners.
Ah, okay.
This is a total beginner's workout routine. I'm a total beginner. I'm looking for a workout.
Fix number three, dropping the broad category keywords.
These are things like money, success, video, recipe,
single words that are too big for a small channel twin. If I did a video, I'm like, how to make money on YouTube,
now suddenly, uh, that video is getting placed next to
Ali Abdaal,
Think Media,
MrBeast.
Right? Like, all of these massive channels. There's no way that my little video is gonna be able to compete next to that. It's gonna be so much harder. Here's another example. So if you were a cooking creator, easy dinner recipes.
You are now fighting all of food YouTube in that one. But thirty minute sheet pan dinners for busy parents,
that is a super specific video targeting a super specific person.
YouTube's gonna have a lot easier time finding
a better fit for you, for your audience,
and then you will get a higher suggested video click through rate so more people will watch. And the simplest way to think about this, what AI was doing with all three of these fixes was just naming a who, so who the video is for, and a what, what it's actually about. So your first 40 title characters and your first description line will do the heavy lifting on the who and the what of the video. If I did a my secret YouTube tips video,
no. That's no good. What's the who? What's the what? The metadata audit for small channels under one k. Maybe not the best title, but we'll use it for the example because you can clearly see the who, which is small channels under one k, and you can see the what, which is the metadata audit. Now if you have been digging Ask Studio as much as I have and you wanna see the exact prompts that I've been using to help break down my channel's data and really help me analyze what's going on, I put together a full on, like, prompt packet.
It's copy and paste, so it's super easy, and the links will be down the description if you wanna check that out. So after learning this, I actually went back and I redid
all the titles from my lowest performing videos to make sure that I had a who
and a what in them. Because also YouTube never gives up on your videos, truly.
On my old channel, I had videos that were years old that were flops. Like, they were complete flops.
And I was like, you know what? Let's go back. Let's change up the packaging. New title, new thumbnail. They started growing again, and they became unflops.
You also need to be patient and give YouTube time because it takes about forty eight hours to process metadata changes.
So
sit back, relax, don't go crazy. I actually tracked all my numbers from the first thirty days of YouTube, and some of it actually really surprised me. So if you want the honest unfiltered version of what starting at zero really looks like, you're gonna wanna watch that right here.