YouTube Search Insights is an experimental feature that shows creators search data such as the queries that led viewers to their videos or query data across YouTube’s entire audience. It can also identify content gaps (when viewers can’t find the exact content they’re looking for). Search Insights was announced on YouTube’s Creator Insider channel on Thursday, November 25, 2021; the company has not provided a timeline for the rollout.
The new features are spread across two tabs within YouTube Insights: “Your viewers’ searches” and “Searches across YouTube.”
Why we care. This experimental feature provides brands and creators with keyword data that can be used to hone in on their audience’s interests or gauge interest for any topic across YouTube’s entire user base. It also provides them with data on how important those keywords are to their overall view count. And, if it works well, the content gap feature may streamline workflows even further by simply highlighting content opportunities that YouTube has identified.
When YouTube Search Insights becomes widely available, brands and creators will be able to use it to improve their content planning to make more relevant videos for their audiences.
Your viewers’ searches. The “Your viewers’ searches” tab (shown below) displays the top searches from your viewers or from channels similar to yours. YouTube-wide search volume for the term is also available, although it is described generically as low, medium or high.
And, creators can also see the number of views their channel received for a given query (this data is only available for the previous 28-day period).
Searches across YouTube. This tab goes beyond a channel’s own audience and allows creators to explore searches across YouTube’s entire audience. This data is searchable, so creators can, for example, type in “Chromebook” to view the most popular keywords viewers are using to find Chromebook-related content.
Similar to the Your viewers’ searches tab, search volume is described as high, medium or low and data for views your channel received from these terms is only available for the previous 28-day period.
Content gaps. “We’re also testing a new concept called content gaps,” Alina Verbenchuk of Creator Insider said, “A search becomes a content gap when viewers can’t find the information they were looking for.” Content gaps can include instances when users can’t find any results for a particular query or the content they found is low quality, she provided as examples. When applicable, content gap labels appear next to keywords (as shown above) and content gap filters will be available in both the Searches across YouTube and Your viewers’ searches tabs.
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