How YouTube search works

YouTube has a tremendous amount of video content – over 500 hours are uploaded every minute! Without a robust search function, finding what you need would be nearly impossible. That's why YouTube's search ranking system is designed to help you quickly find what you're looking for.

YouTube's system prioritises three key elements for best results. The importance of these elements may vary by search type. The elements are:

To estimate relevance we look into many factors, such as how well the title, tags, description and video content match your search query. Engagement signals are a valuable way to determine relevance. We look at overall user engagement, such as the watch time of a particular video for a particular query to determine if the video is considered relevant to the query by other users. Finally, for quality, our system is designed to identify signals that can help determine which channels demonstrate expertise, authoritativeness and trustworthiness on a given topic.?

In addition to the three key elements, we strive to deliver personally relevant search results. For that reason, our system may also consider your search and watch history if you have it turned on. That's why your search results might differ from another user's search results for the same query.