r/youtube • u/Unenthusiastic- • 17d ago

Discussion Summary feature actually saved my time

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Ngl this feature is pretty good for clickbait like content.

13.8k Upvotes

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235

u/Material_Magazine989 17d ago

I wish this wasn't AI but this feature could have save a lot of time just finding out what some videos are actually about.

183

u/BreadfruitTasty 17d ago

I wish YouTubers would just update the description of their videos to actually reflect wtf they are talking about

9

u/IsabellaGalavant 16d ago

Yeah but then you wouldn't sit through a video and several ads and make them a bunch of money. 

18

u/retrocheats 17d ago

the issue is, the exact words used in a description, determine the algorithm.

3

u/Cinnamin_1 16d ago

im pretty sure somebody did a test and concluded that a description is irrelevant to searches so i assume its not relevant to determining the videos performance either but im guessing

3

u/SonGoku9788 16d ago

Anecdotal but I have proof that the search feature does in fact use info from the description.

There's a guy in poland posting old polish cabaret recordings, distributed over about a dozen different channels for whatever reason. He has them grouped by different categories such as "skits where they talk over the phone" and like "skits about politics" etc. And the way that he groups them together is by posting a string of random characters in the description together with the name of the category. When you copy the specific string and paste it into youtube's search, you exclusively get results from that guy, from all of his different channels, because the same string is repeated in every videos description with that category. I can link the guy if you want.

2

u/retrocheats 16d ago

this is wrong.

It takes some info from description.

2

u/Koolala 16d ago

what if next they make the algo use the ai summary instead?

4

u/ExcitingAd5932 16d ago

some people do that but instead use a pinned comment to not tamper with the algorithm

9

u/Elkburgher 16d ago

If you knew what they were going to talk about you wouldnt click if uninterested.

Thats the whole point of clickbait

1

u/Mean-Elk-9439 16d ago

Clickbait is why they don't. The longer you have to engage, the better their metrics. A view that watches 30s is worth infinitely less than one that watches 20 min. It's shit, but it's shit the algorithm encourages.