Youtube let slip something really interesting in their ‘Update to YouTube’s dislike count’ yesterday.
While watching last night, we verbally gasped “whaaaaat” at a line YouTube came out with in yesterday’s YouTube’s explanation video.
It’s always been an urban legend that ‘likes’ and ‘dislikes’ might be a contributing factor to how you’ll be recommended in future videos, but it would make little sense if it did. The initial premise of the ‘dislike button’ was to share your dislike on a VIDEO, not a channel.
We have personal contacts at YouTube and Google. However, they have personally denied that this is the case, saying that a dislike on a video will not negatively change your channel being recommended and has no effect on your channel… Hmm.
Well, going by their latest upload regarding the removal of public dislikes, this is a load of nonsense, and it’s a pretty big revelation that we need to consider moving forward with our clients on YouTube and their place on the discovery page.
This line from the video is a huge revelation. Maybe it’s a new feature starting now, or it’s always been the case and never confirmed. The fact the quote isn’t “that action will STILL BE used to tune your own recommendations.” makes us wonder if it’s a new feature.
Knowing that dislikes can negatively affect your channel changes a lot for YouTuber’s and brands who use YouTube.
Overall, this means if you put a foot wrong, upload a slightly boring video and get downvoted… Those down voters on that ONE video who may enjoy your other content will unlikely be recommended future uploads. People who are engaged enough to share their opinion on your video, a valuable viewer potentially gone. (On average, only 17% of viewers of a YouTube video engage by commenting or using the thumbs up/down feature)
There’s no mention if receiving a thumbs up on your video will help your channel be recommended, which would seem unfair to content creators. Moving forward, to be safe, we’d highly recommend encouraging your viewers to ‘like’, or ‘comment’, which looks a little naff in 2021 but necessary if you want to feature on YouTube’s Discovery page or rank on past viewers recommended pages.
Overall, is it a big deal that the dislike ratio is being hidden? Not really. The only annoyance as a team that we could come up with is tutorials/recipes/reviews on YouTube to determine which ones are somewhat trustworthy.
