If you are a #YouTuber or even someone who does SEO for a living, I'm about to blow your mind:
Google doesn't give a sh*t about your title and description when it comes to ranking your content.
You think thumbnails are just for the user? Think again.
A thread 👇
Google's machine learning knows much more than you may realize. It's listening to what you say in your videos, it sees what your videos are about, and yes, it knows @whatsinside your thumbnail. (Sorry, I couldn't resist)
To demonstrate, I'll be using Google's Vision AI API. You can access it (for free) at the following URL and dump any image in and test yourself:
cloud.google.com/vision
Let's start with some of my thumbnails.
Vision AI doesn't just know a person is on the thumbnail, it knows it's a surprised person. It also picks up text.
Seeing the webcam in the photo, it knows the likely categories this video should be in.
However, it could improve.
Look at the top objects identified. It's not the webcam, it's ME!
That doesn't help Google know what the video is about.
Faces catch human eyeballs (@netflix knows this well). We don't need to remove ourselves for the sake of pleasing a bot.
Take a look at this thumbnail from @ZachsTechTurf. This video is performing well.
Despite you and I connecting to the face, it's so little of a focus that Google can't pick up the emotion.
What do they pick up? That GPU and PC case makes it clear what the video is about.
And yes, Google even tries to determine if the image is family-friendly. Compare a normal video of mine to a shirtless thumbnail that tanked a video.
Not only was it labeled a possibly "racy" video, it was labeled "likely" a spoof. Views SUCKED until I switched the thumbnail.
I even tested a thumbnail on @PaddyG96's channel. His videos have been crushing it, except this video.
What does Google see? A possible "racy" video. Hard to think that doesn't suppress this video a bit.
Moral of the story:
Help Google (and your users) know what the video is about by making that thing the FOCUS.
Two videos from @UnboxTherapy. One crushed it, one didn't. You can guess.
Oh, notice how it picks up logos? Now it knows to show that video to @secretlabchairs fans.
Use this tool to play around with your thumbnails and compare your high performing videos to your low ones. You'll find patterns.
Oh, and for you non-YouTube SEO folks, maybe think twice about the photo you upload to the next blog post you publish 😉
If you haven't already seen, I posted another thread that further supports this theory:
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