YouTube is gearing up for 2021 with new capabilities, one of which is helping users look for videos by hashtag. First developed in 2018, the hashtag search capability initially didn’t quite work as expected. Users would type in a hashtag, and the results page would include related content that didn’t contain the hashtag.
Through continuous development, YouTube has now successfully launched a dedicated results page that includes videos with the specific hashtag users searched for. Users can also access the hashtag search results page by clicking into any automatically linked hashtag displayed on YouTube. Read on for everything you need to know about the new feature!
Once users click on a specific hashtag, YouTube will display the top-performing videos on the new search results page. Not wanting to discount other smaller channels with relevant content, searchers can scroll down to discover more content from other creators that is less popular.
Furthermore, the new results page will include a video count at the top. It allows users to see how many channels have published videos using a specific hashtag, and how many videos there are in total. These elements can be useful to both marketers and content creators as they can look up a hashtag and gauge the overall popularity of the topic on YouTube. Gathering data from the results page can significantly help with YouTube keyword search strategies as well.
Search results are arranged algorithmically
As mentioned before, top-performing channels will pop up first. One disadvantage of having search results algorithmically arrange in one feed is that it only benefits the more popular channels. It would be great to see YouTube adding more search filters later.
Hashtags on YouTube don’t work in real-time
Whereas Twitter users can follow topics in real-time, it’s sadly not an option with YouTube’s hashtag search. This makes it harder for users to discover brand new content when searching by hashtag.
YouTube plans to make further updates to hashtags in the future. This might include bringing all of YouTube’s search filters over to the hashtag page, or an option for reverse chronological order in the results page, to give other content creators or channels a chance to be discovered.
Speaking of content creators, YouTube also announced that post-roll ads will automatically show up on all monetised videos. YouTube team states that monetising creators with videos over 10 minutes in length will have post-roll ads turned on by default.
However, it’s important to note that all advertising still remains optional. Content creators can turn the post-roll ads off whenever they want. They can turn them off during the upload flow, or turn them off on existing videos from the monetisation tab.
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