Quantifying YouTube Keyword Opportunities — Whiteboard Friday

Jun 12, 2026 02:00 PM - 4 days ago 4757

How do you measure YouTube keyword opportunity? Phil Nottingham shares 3 unsocial metrics for evaluating hunt demand, competition, and value.

How is YouTube different?

Well, firstly, it's bully to announcement that YouTube is somewhat different from Google successful position of a hunt engine. Yes, it's driven partially by search, but it's besides a find motor for contented successful a overmuch broader way.

You tin get views connected YouTube done the YouTube homepage, done the subscriber fee, done suggested videos, and different methods crossed the platform.

So YouTube benignant of sits halfway betwixt a hunt motor and a societal network.

And so, therefore, erstwhile we're reasoning astir these kinds of metrics that we mightiness traditionally, successful position of Google search, usage to quantify the worth of a fixed query, we request to benignant of accommodate them and deliberation somewhat otherwise to find analogous metrics that use to YouTube crossed the board. 

Median monthly position velocity

Zoomed-in conception of the whiteboard showing the narration betwixt hunt measurement and MMVV.

So firstly, hunt volume, now this mightiness beryllium useful for Google. It's not really that useful for YouTube.

One, we person nary measurement of really knowing the hunt measurement connected YouTube. Google doesn't supply this information. There are devices that declare to beryllium capable to connection this. But successful reality, what they're offering you is benignant of an approximation based connected different variables. Nothing that really reflects the genuine hunt volume.

And much broadly, for astir channels that get tons of views, the hunt is not the intends successful which they seizure astir of them. They will seizure astir of those views done different aspects of the YouTube platform, pinch hunt being possibly 1 of galore systems and feeds successful which they tin really make views crossed their afloat channel.

So hunt measurement only tells america portion of the story. So we request to deliberation somewhat otherwise for YouTube. So alternatively of reasoning astir hunt volume, we tin deliberation astir a different metric.

Now what we person pinch YouTube, that we don't person pinch Google, is accusation astir the magnitude of group that person watched a fixed video, the property of that peculiar content, and besides the number of subscribers. And we tin usage these peculiar variables to show america a communicative that we different couldn't connected Google.

So for hunt volume, the metric that we should attraction about, the analogous metric is MMVV, which stands for median monthly position velocity.

Now we get this metric by fundamentally uncovering the apical 100 videos for a fixed query, looking astatine really galore views they person sewage per month, and past uncovering the median. So the median, alternatively than the mean, because that removes the outliers. And this is going to show america really what the request is for a fixed keyword complete time, taking into relationship each of the different areas successful which views tin beryllium captured from the YouTube platform.

So that's fundamentally really we're going to measurement demand. 

Finding the highest level of opportunity

So if you find queries that person precocious median monthly position velocity, debased median subscribers, and a agelong median age, that's suggestive of a very precocious level of opportunity, wherever you mightiness beryllium capable to rank, beryllium visible, and get tons of views.

So that is the measurement successful which you tin really quantify the worth of different keywords connected YouTube that you mightiness want to create videos for, rank for, and get tons of views.

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