Youtube clickbait / faux sensation / home-alone-thumbnail videos, Google changes, etc

TimmyO

In the ‘PR’ thread the other day, the subject of clickbaity Youtube video titles, and the general style of alarmist/faux ‘omg’ content that seems to fill our feeds there. 

It reminded me I’d been thinking about how Google itself has been through a recent low-point in terms of how actually helpful it was being, and that that had resulted in some very big changes to the types of content they are more recently (trying to) pushing to the top of search results. 

Google: For the web / google search engine, it had got to the point that the first few pages were stuffed full of site that are, primarily, good at getting on the first few pages. The SEO industry and ad-revenue-driven blogging was resting in a lot of (for a long while) non-expert info and ‘never touched the product’ “reviews” being what we were being shown in search. Then more recently, that job got even easier for the wannabe blog millionaires thanks to AI tools. 

My own experience of it was that I ended up scrolling through the results pages looking for forums, reddit, anything that meant that an actual human with a genuine interest in or knowledge of the topic had been involved in generating the info. 

Skip forward to now, and Googles ‘Helpful Content Update’ seems to be punishing sites and blogs stuffed full of ads, or which look like they are building patterns of content that deliberately  “…target long tail keywords…” (the advice that SEO bros have been giving each other for years) and instead shoving Reddit and Quora and Forums to the fore. 

So in short, they realised that they’d created a monster, and have done some pretty seismic things to change it recently. 

Youtube: So now Youtube - as was said in ht other thread, the reason that YouTubers churn out a sea of identikit content all jumping on the latest wave of interest, and do it all the time, is because of how Youtube itself rewards or punishes channels that do or don’t do this. 

The result right now seems to be viewers getting more and more tired of it (despite still clicking on it). 

I wonder whether Google will take a similar approach eventually on YouTube - and rather than promote the trope-slave content, penalise it and instead experiment with different ways to serve results and recommendations.

I really hope so. There are only so many headlines along the lines of “Turns out I was breathing wrong this whole time - game changer!” I can take… 

Surely it would be better for the creators too - imagine NOT being left in the dust just because you only post content when you have something good to share… 

stonevibe

I find YouTube bad, if not worse, for AI and clickbait junk.

Reddit is also full of links to clickbait junk these days as well. SEO has always been a bit of a gamble, as nobody knows what Google's algorithm is looking for.

As my day job is all about creating web content, I'm pretty happy with the new Google update as it gets rid of—a lot of the rubbish.

I need to find a way to stop other sites from stealing my content now and rebranding it as their own.

wibble

SEO experts hate these 10 changes, you won't believe #4

sev112

How does one access the “new”/better Google, or does it just automatically do it ?

stonevibe

sev112 said:

How does one access the “new”/better Google, or does it just automatically do it ?

Google 'Blue Waffle' or 'Lemon Party' to get it started

Fingers657

There isn’t such a thing as better Google It’s still one of the biggest spies on the planet.

racefaceec90

can i also add stupid facial expressions in yt thumbnails. they seem to be everywhere and a guaranteed way for me to never click on the video. 

Supportact

I hadn't noticed the change in Google results, but possibly that sounds like a positive change. YouTube I totally agree is increasingly frustrating in the stuff it suggests. It tends to favour 'controversial' content, and just seems to push that over stuff that's actually useful. As a result I tend not to look at the 'feed' and just search specific things, but it still affects the results.

For example, a while back I searched on YouTube for Chuang Tzu, the Chinese poet philosopher. That must have told the algorithm I might want videos about philosophy. Fair enough, but as the algorithm also favours content that causes maximum engagement, it decided that I wanted to see videos by Jordan Peterson. Whether he is a philosopher or not I don't know, but it's a pretty big leap from Chuang Tzu to him. Anyway I'm not interested in him, so I clicked on the button to say I don't want to see his videos. Even then it threw up suggestions for videos of people criticising his videos. So, it causes me to not use it so much, or just use it in a narrow way (i. e. Obsessively watching identical videos of very specific types of overdrive pedals, or lawnmower stuff).

I think it's quite dangerous in a way, people can get drawn into more and more extreme content and it can cause actual harm to them. I know a couple of people who have had their minds messed up by stuff on the Internet. I think it's a great tool, but you have to be careful where it takes you. 

Kittyfrisk

From the responses so far, I'd say the algorithms are working exactly as designed, nothing to do with the accuracy of search results, all about click monetisation & advertising revenue's. 
Sad, but apparently inevitable.

Emp_Fab

Talking of monetisation.....   I went to Amazon the other day to look at the prices of Kindles.  I've mislaid my old one and it had a small mark on the screen that my brain could not stop staring at!  Anyway, I was horrified to see that they now do two versions of each model - an expensive one 'without ads' and a cheaper one 'with ads'.

Adverts in a fucking book!   Presumably you get forced to see an advert every so many pages.

It won't be long before they're projecting ads onto the clouds.

stickyfiddle

The best way to get info on something is very often to add "+reddit" to the end of your search

Sadly there's no equivalent for youtube. Aside from the obvious clickbaity front end of even lots of otherwise very good videos, what's so frustrating is that search these days usually feeds you 4 videos that are aligned with what you searched for, then 6 unrelated shorts, then 4 "other videos you might like" then another 4 search results. And all of that is also structured to prioritise anything you're subscribed to or have interacted with. 

This makes it almost impossible to find something new, which seriously hurts smaller & newer creators

LionAquaLooper

I became disenchanted with Youtube a long time ago.  All the channels I follow are just on a never ending mission to furiously churn out content even when they have nothing new or substantial to say - but you only find out after you've clicked on the video because clickbait. 

Then youtube released "shorts" and now it's even worse because these people release shorts which 99% of the time are just little snippets from their main video. 

So if you've subscribed to even just 10 channels let's say, you'll very quickly find your subscription page inundated with videos and shorts very quickly that you won't be able to catch up with completely unless you devote hours of your life everyday to watch them all....just so these people get their money.  Seems like a bad trade to me so no thank you.  

skullfunkerry

I’ve noticed recently (well, recently-ish, it’s been a few months now), one of the photographers I follow on YT will release a new video, and then a few days later the title will change. It will start as “Took the wrong camera to Malaysia” and by the time I get round to watching it will be called “A week in Malaysia with the Ricoh G3” or something. I wondered if that was to do with gaming the algorithm.

One of the other photogs I follow always gives his videos clickbaity titles… it makes me grimace, but I like his videos so I’ll put with “Have I fallen into this trap again?!” when it should be called “Lovely little wander around Windermere with my camera”.

stickyfiddle

skullfunkerry said:

I’ve noticed recently (well, recently-ish, it’s been a few months now), one of the photographers I follow on YT will release a new video, and then a few days later the title will change. It will start as “Took the wrong camera to Malaysia” and by the time I get round to watching it will be called “A week in Malaysia with the Ricoh G3” or something. I wondered if that was to do with gaming the algorithm.

One of the other photogs I follow always gives his videos clickbaity titles… it makes me grimace, but I like his videos so I’ll put with “Have I fallen into this trap again?!” when it should be called “Lovely little wander around Windermere with my camera”.

Yeah people often change titles and thumbnails if the vid doesn't get enough hits in the first 12/24/48 hours

LionAquaLooper

I don't know about everyone else but the more I'm pushed or baited to do/watch/listen/buy something (i.e. via incessent ads or clickbait videos etc), the more I'm going to do the opposite.  I really don't respond well to nagging.  All those millions of pounds every year spent on marketing are wasted on someone like me 

idiotwindow

I find a liberal use of the "Don't recommend channel" option can provide some relief from the more egregious clickbait merchants. I haven't seen a recommendation for any videos by Paul Davids, Mary Spender, Justin Guitar, etc. for a very long time, and I'm thankful for that, but I do find Youtube has been getting generally more tedious over the last 12 months or so. Most of the channels I generally like have become increasingly repetitive and I have begun unsubscribing from many of them.

kaypeejay

Emp_Fab said:

Talking of monetisation.....   I went to Amazon the other day to look at the prices of Kindles.  I've mislaid my old one and it had a small mark on the screen that my brain could not stop staring at!  Anyway, I was horrified to see that they now do two versions of each model - an expensive one 'without ads' and a cheaper one 'with ads'.

Adverts in a fucking book!   Presumably you get forced to see an advert every so many pages.

It won't be long before they're projecting ads onto the clouds.

I think the adverts only appear on the lock screen.

crosstownvamp

You can use verbatim search with Google on a computer. Not sure about phones. Under the drop down labelled 'All results' select 'verbatim' and it will search the exact words. Or put phrases in double quotes.

breakstuff

I mostly love Justin Hawkins videos when I do happen to watch one, but his click baity titles really annoy me and I inevitably end up scrolling past. A more descriptive title would pretty much ensure I watched more of his videos.

TimmyO

breakstuff said:

I mostly love Justin Hawkins videos when I do happen to watch one, but his click baity titles really annoy me and I inevitably end up scrolling past. A more descriptive title would pretty much ensure I watched more of his videos.

It just be that those of us who feel as you do (I'm the same) are significantly outnumbered by those who click on driveby bait thumbnails.

I'm hoping it's something that gradually backfires and forces the algorithm to be changed, as seems to have happened on web search slowly 

PLOP

https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/clickbait-remover-for-youtube/

A good Firefox extension for removing “home alone face” thumbnails from YouTube. This replaces that thumbnail with a screenshot at a random point in the video. This, along with about three other extensions that block ads and add or remove aspects of the pages make YouTube bearable. There might be a chrome version, but I don’t know. If you use chrome and complain about YouTube, you’re part of the problem by feeding the google machine. Firefox is safer, more customisable and doesn’t exist to harvest your data first then be a web browser second.