Top YouTube "how-to" search results distribution by description length 2021

"How-to" content is among the most well-known video genres on YouTube, spanning from tutorials to practical demonstrations. As of March 2021, it appeared that when it came to content triggered by question keywords on YouTube.com, videos providing context in the description ranked higher among the platform's search results. Roughly 33 percent of high ranking videos presented descriptions between 101 and 249 words. Content providing no description performed poorly on the YouTube.com search ranking, with only two percent of the videos with zero words in the description figuring among the highest ranking content.

Distribution of leading search results of "how-to" videos on YouTube as of March 2021, by number of words in the description

Characteristic	Share of videos
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Release date

August 2021

More information

Region

Worldwide

Survey time period

January to March, 2020 and January to March, 2021

Number of respondents

1,165 "how-to" keywords

Special properties

including data for the leading 10 results for each analyzed Google keyword on Youtube.com

Supplementary notes

According to the source:"We analyzed 1,165 keywords that start with “how-to.” We chose “how-to” queries because they usually represent the educational intent and those videos people mostly find from searches. So our assumption was that search optimization should be more important for them than for other keywords."

Always according to the source: "We took a look at YouTube’s top 10 search results for each of these keywords to check how different video features affect their positions in YouTube search. Based on this data, we gathered a wide range of metrics to assess which of them affect videos’ performance. [...] We used median values instead of average values to compare metrics for different positions since they are more resistant to outliers."

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