YouTube optimizes search to reward engaging videos

E. Betters

YouTube is tweaking the way it ranks videos as part of its recent trend to improve video discovery.

Google’s video-sharing platform made changes to Suggest Videos in March, and it refreshed YouTube Analytics just yesterday, and now it is attempting to applaud and boost popular videos with new optimizations to ranking.

YouTube elaborated on the official YouTube Creator blog:

The experimental results of this change have proven positive — less clicking, more watching. We expect the amount of time viewers spend watching videos from search and across the site to increase.  As with previous optimizations to our discovery features, this should benefit your channel if your videos drive more viewing time across YouTube.

YouTube does not detail the exact adjustments, but it clearly wants to feed engaging videos to users who do not have a specific search query in mind. The result, as YouTube suggested above, will not only supply users with trending video but will also pipe more views to successful publishers.

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YouTube rolls out improved analytics with more time watched data and annotation reporting

Jordan Kahn

Google announced a few updates for YouTube Analytics today on the YouTube Creators blog. The new tools for content creators include enhanced “time watched” data, a beta version of “Annotations report,” and a few UI improvements.

For time-watched data, which Google originally rolled out earlier this year, channel owners can now see an enhanced Views report that includes “estimated minutes watched”. It also features other metrics from a “Compare metric” drop down menu, such as: “Monetizable views”, “Unique viewers”, “Estimated minutes watched”, and “Total estimated earnings”. You will also now find “Annotations (Beta)” in the YouTube Analytics sidebar, allowing you to “view data on the performance of your video annotations, with insights on viewer click and close rates.

As for design changes, there is now a Date Slider to easily adjust the time period you are viewing data for, a metadata section with data for video duration and lifetime views, and video hover cards to quickly view a thumbnail and info for your videos.

Reminder: VP debate with Joe Biden and Paul Ryan to live stream on YouTube at 9 p.m. EST

E. Betters

The only 2012 U.S. Vice Presidential election debate, with nominees Vice President Joe Biden and Wisconsin Representative Paul Ryan, will live stream tonight on YouTube’s Politics Channel.

The YouTube Politics Channel often swaps its feature video on the main page, as 9to5Google previously reported, but today’s prominent live feed is from partners ABC News and Yahoo News (above). ABC News just finished airing preview debate coverage with predictions, insights, and commentary by leading analysts, but the network will go live again this evening to cover the debate at 9 p.m. EST. The debate is scheduled to conclude at 10:30 p.m. EST.

The video below, now spotlighted on the channel’s main page, is “The Choice 2012″ by PBS’ Frontline. Additional preview coverage between 4 p.m. and 9 p.m. contains live streams by The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, and Al Jazeera.

A screenshot of the schedule is also below, or just check out the YouTube Politics channel now.

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YouTube celebrates success of original channel initiative by launching more channels from Europe and US

E. Betters

YouTube announced 100 original channels were coming to the video-sharing platform last fall, and now it is following up exactly one-year later with the launch of new channels coming from France, Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States.

“From local cuisine, health and wellness and parenting to sports, music, comedy, animation and news, this new lineup of original channels will have something for everyone,” revealed YouTube on its global blog. “They are backed by some of the biggest producers, well-known celebrities and emerging media companies from Europe and the U.S.”

Along with the news about upcoming channels, YouTube also revealed a few statistics on the success of its one-year-old initiative:

  • Our top 25 original channels are now averaging over a million views every week
  • 800 million of your are watching 4 billion hours every month, that’s up from 3 billion hours earlier this year
  • The number of people subscribing has doubled y/y
  • And partners this year are reaching the 100k subscriber mark 5x faster than they were just two years ago

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YouTube for Android updated with new UI, video pre-loading on Froyo and Gingerbread devices

Jake Smith

Following the release of its new YouTube for iOS app, Google just announced an updated version of its YouTube for Android app this afternoon. The update includes a new UI along with video pre-loading for Froyo and Gingerbread devices. The pre-loading feature allows users to not only save battery and bandwidth but also load videos for later while experiencing a spotty connection. Video pre-loading has been available for Android 4.x devices since last summer.

Furthermore, with the update, users can add videos to their YouTube TV queue to allow for more organized viewing and “more channels to pick from on the Channel store.” You can check out the full change log below, or give the update a spin for yourself by downloading it from the Play store: [Google Play via Google Plus]

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Google now allows users to download all of their YouTube videos thanks to Google Takeout

Jake Smith

Thanks to a new addition to Google’s Takeout service, YouTube users can now download all of their videos in one fell swoop. For those unfamiliar, Google’s Takeout service, which is a part of Google’s “Data Liberation Front,” allows users to download key data hosted by Google in one file. Data includes Google Docs, chat history, Picasa albums, and now YouTube videos. To download videos from Google Takeout, you simply visit the source link we provided below and begin downloading the videos in a few simple clicks without any transcoding whatsoever. How nifty! [Takeout via Data Liberation Blog]
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