šØImportant reminder: The YouTube algorithm actually changed, for the worse. ( Data)
Iāve addressed this last year already and because we havenāt seen it being addressed, I thought itād be a good idea to remind everyone of what happened last year.
Before I begin, a direct note to all my friends at YouTube, I truly respect what youāve been doing in the past year, and I know youāll take this problem seriously, but urgency is key when creators are hurting.
Letās begin.
Last year, creators of all sizes started noticing a significant change in the overall performance of their channels. Usually this is related to the overall behavior of audiences, however, this one felt different. It wasnāt just one or two channels, it was every single channel I was working on (and more). These are channels that pull 100 million to 1 billion views per month at times.
At first, I was like: alright, letās find out where weāre going wrong. Maybe weāre missing something. However, after weeks and months, no answers were found. This is very frustrating, not only for myself but also for the creators who are relying on these answers to maintain their channel, business and livelihood.
But thatās when we made a breakthrough, a way of looking at data that we had missed.
You see, this entire time we were analyzing the channel as a whole, new and old videos combined. However, we werenāt focused on isolating older content, specifically content with a publish date older than one month.
Thatās where, for the first time, we noticed something unusual. We saw a complete crash in short form views on content older than one month. (see image)
What we found was that somewhere in the middle of September last year, YouTube had pushed a significant change in their short form algorithm which impacted nearly every short form creator across the platform. Why is this a problem? Because it affects every creator we all care about. It didnāt matter if you were a smaller creator or one of the top ten creators, we havenāt found many people who were spared. Iāll leave a brief explanation at the bottom so you can check your own channel.
And these werenāt just entertainment or educational creators, it was both.
What we found is that YouTube seems to have implemented a change that strongly prioritizes content uploaded in the last month, roughly 28 to 30 days, weāre still unsure.
But what impact does this have, and why do I believe this is something that should be brought to light?
The first impact is that weāre seeing a shift away from quality to quantity. Often, creators live off the revenue generated, not just Adsense, from these bigger content pieces. A strong portion of this revenue comes from their back catalog, meaning older content. With this change, youāre increasing the importance of high volume uploads in the first 30 days.
What do I believe is happening, and why is this change going through?
I believe there are two reasons why YouTube is pushing this change.
First, to hit certain targets with Shorts. Plain simple, I donāt believe this is a āwhatās best for the creatorā type of play, it feels more like a āwe want to compete with TikTokā type of play. Not unreasonable, even if the creator gets hurt by it short term. Iām just trying to think from a corporate point of view.
The second reason, which I believe to be the actual leading reason, is a push for recency, freshness or novelty, whichever term they would choose to use. But if this is the reason, thereās a massive overcorrection happening. Some content needs that freshness: news, streaming highlights, medical information. However, this isnāt true for all types of content. Some content from years ago is just as good today.
We have noticed that certain top content pieces, individual videos, still get a significant amount of views, so it looks more like prioritization than anything else.
Regardless, while in private I find it fun to refer to this situation as āthe flatteningā, in reality this is a very concerning moment where simple ideas turn into a massive hit toward the creator economy. And this is just the tip of the iceberg of changes that have been affecting people.
Itās important that changes on the platform arenāt just focused on the consumer, but the preservation of a healthy creator economy that allows creators to grow their business, teams, and create better content. Without a focus on both the creator and the consumer, youāll quickly run into an issue of low quality slop that makes people want to go elsewhere.
If thereās any call to action here for you, whether youāre a creator or a viewer, I strongly encourage you to leave your thoughts here to encourage YouTube to rethink this decision, or at least optimize it so that itās also regarding the importance of keeping a healthy creator economy. Share your thoughts, and even data from your own channel, because this will be seen by people who have the power to make change.
Disclaimer: Iāve left out some sensitive information. However, if you want to check this for yourself, go to Analytics, click on Advanced Mode, filter by Content Type (Shorts), filter by Publish Date (for example any short published from Jan 2025 to Jun 2025), set the data to Last 365 Days and take a look at the change happening around September last year. I think you can imagine why it took so long for us to find out where the issue began.