The YouTube shorts algorithm. It's new and offers amazing opportunities for channel growth, and yet it's baffling and unpredictable. Having said that, we think we finally cracked part of its code, but in order to benefit, you're goanna have to act fast. Let me paint you a typical scenario. I need the solution to a problem and naturally I head to YouTube. I type something into the search bar and I get three videos, one, a five-minute video, two an eight minute three second video that is obviously stretched out long enough just to allow mid-roll ads.

 


 Quite annoying, right?

 

 And then a relatively new option, a 40-second Short. All of these videos resolve the same problem. And so if you're in a rush and you just need to fix your problem as quickly as possible, yeah, that 40-second Short is quite compelling, isn't it? And yes, the bigger revelation here is YouTube Shorts now appear in YouTube search. That's a powerful addition to the second largest search engine in the world, allegedly. YouTube Shorts Vs YouTube Search Search-based content has been a foundation of YouTube ever since Google got involved. And people are always going to need to solve problems.

 

How do I grow my YouTube channel?

 

 Where to travel on a budget?

 

 How do I play the guitar?

 

And through this content, there is countless education and how-to based channels that have built business empires, solving viewers ‘problems. But the problem is every creator already knows this, which means that search-based content is extremely competitive and often oversaturated. But when YouTube suddenly introduces a new video format to search-based content, that kind of acts like a hard reset. Over the last decade, creators haven't been making vertical format search-based content assuming its goanna be discoverable on YouTube but all of a sudden it is. So there isn't much of it yet anyway. Let me show you what's happening on our channel.

 

When I go into the Shorts video analytics in the YouTube Studio and take a look at traffic sources, over the last nine months, we are seeing a near 500% increase in traffic from YouTube search for our YouTube Shorts. And even more incredibly, if we just look at the 2023 data, YouTube search is our biggest traffic source for YouTube Shorts. And yet YouTube refuses to let us put custom thumbnails on our Shorts to make them look attractive on a search page. Unless you hack it like this. I'm sure many of you are familiar with this type of graph, avoiding the YouTube Shorts Surge the Shorts surge, where YouTube dumps thousands of views onto a Short only for the views to dry up just as quickly.

 

 Again, pretty annoying, right?

 

 So what if instead you could get consistent evergreen views over a 120-day period from a YouTube Short via search traffic views? Oh yeah, this is now possible. And if you do start to get YouTube search traffic, that can naturally lead onto something else: external Google search traffic. Yeah, I never thought I'd see the day when a YouTube Short will get most of its views from Google search. But there's the evidence, plain and simple. So where am I going with all of this? How to get more YouTube Shorts views from YouTube search well put simply, if you are a search-based YouTube channel that's had previous success, you can use YouTube Shorts as a brand new launching pad and start all over again. And let's not over complicate things here. Go to the advanced mode of your analytics, set a time period of the last 365 days, sort by traffic source and then click on YouTube search.

 

Make YouTube Shorts with these search term queries as the basis of your titles. The chances are you already know which of your long-form videos rank in YouTube search. Well then, remake them as YouTube Shorts and then look for search-based opportunities that haven't yet been served for YouTube Shorts. How to live stream on YouTube Have some successful long-form videos. Let's fill the Short shelf up with some of our content. This is all a little bit "Back to the Future." Creators, once again, have a fresh opportunity to dominate a search term on Y But that window of opportunity is very finite because when other creators, especially those from Tik Tok, realize the potential of search on YouTube; they're goanna flood the platform.

 


So the time to act is now if you want to grow your channel but not earn very much doing it. While you may start to create evergreen views on YouTube Shorts over a longer period of time, I'm afraid that's not going to extend into evergreen income. Yeah, that's YouTube Shorts for you. So if you want to position yourself at the front of the Shorts wave, search-based content might be the solution for you. However, when it comes to long form content, I now have completely the opposite opinion. YouTube search is dead and this is why.