YouTube is over 15 years old, but the platform has only gotten better, faster, and stronger over time.
If you’re thinking about entering the world of video with the world’s most popular video-sharing social network, we’ve got all the hot numbers you’ll need to inform your strategy right here.
YouTube Video Statistics
The first YouTube video ever posted was Jawed Karim’s (founder) Me at the Zoo on 23rd April 2005
‘BTS,’ ‘pewdiepie,’ ‘ASMR,’ ‘Billie Eilish,’ and ‘baby shark’ are the top 5 keyword searches globally on YouTube (Ahrefs)
‘Pewdiepie,’ ‘ASMR,’ ‘music,’ ‘markiplier,’ and ‘old town road’ are the top 5 keyword searches on YouTube in the US (Ahrefs)
20% of the top 100 YouTube searches in the US are Music related (Ahrefs)
K-Pop band BTS get a monthly average of over 16 million searches worldwide, which is more than 6 searches per second (Ahrefs)
‘Baby Shark Dance’ by Pinkfong became the most viewed YouTube video on YouTube as of January 2022. It has over 7.8 billion views, making ‘Despacito’ by Louis Fonzi and Daddy Yankee the second most viewed video on YouTube at over 7.1 billion views as of January 2022 (YouTube Trends)
YouTube’s most disliked video is their own YouTube Rewind 2018 with 18 million thumbs down, as of January 2022 (YouTube)
YouTube astoundingly has 4.5 million searches for YouTube (Ahrefs)
68.2% of first-page YouTube videos results are of HD quality and their average length is 14 minutes and 50 seconds (Backlinko)
The number of comments, likes, shares, and views on your video has a strong correlation with its higher ranking (Backlinko)
In the last two years, watch-time on YouTube has grown for videos with titles that include these words:
– Shop with me (10x)
– Does it work (12x)
– Everything you need to know (2x)
(Think with Google, 2018)
Most YouTube users are looking to watch content on things they’re passionate about, and if that video features a celebrity or a famous influencer, they are 3x more likely to watch it (Think with Google)
YouTube users are also 1.6x more likely to pick a video with better production value if it is relevant to their interests (Think with Google)
7.78 million videos were removed from YouTube globally only in the third quarter of 2020 because they violated the community guidelines of the platform. Of this, 481,721 videos were removed by flags from non-automated flagging systems (when viewers manually flag an inappropriate video) (Statista)
26% of adults in the US get news from YouTube. 51% of these news consumers on YouTube are looking for opinions and social commentary while the other 48% are looking for information and facts (Pew Research)
The word “review” in the title of videos made them fetch more than 50,000 years of watch-time on mobile devices alone [Jan-Jun 2015 vs Jan-Jun 2017] (Think with Google)
20% of the top 100 searches in YouTube are music-related. Billie Eilish is the most popular with over 2 million searches in a month (Ahrefs)
52% of the top 100 searches in YouTube are for a YouTube personality or channel – like PewDiePie, James Charles, and Joe Rogan (Ahrefs)
In 2020, 100 billion hours of gaming content was consumed globally. It includes watch-hours from some of the biggest gaming live events and charity fundraisers organized by gaming channels – like the Call of Duty Warzone Tournament (YouTube)
YouTube had more than 1 billion views related to ‘chess’ in 2020 (YouTube Trends)
Videos with ‘Witchcraft 101’ in their search title got over 3 million views in 2020 (YouTube Trends)
Daily live streams on YouTube grew by 45% in total in 2020 (YouTube Trends)
58% of YouTube users are open to watching content made by creators of any age (YouTube Trends)
VTuber (a virtual YouTuber that uses a digital avataar using computer graphics) views grew by more than 1.5 billion per month by October 2020 since January 2016 (YouTube Trends)
47% of viewers are open to consuming VTuber content, i.e, content delivered by created characters who are fictional or virtual (YouTube Trends)