Do This One Thing to Increase YouTube Shorts Views

By now, plenty of creators know the value of YouTube Shorts. Creators with small audiences have posted vertical videos under 60 seconds, had that content featured on the Shorts carousel, and gained thousands of views and subscribers – sometimes in just three months.

Read More: 3 Reasons to Upload YouTube Shorts

Now that Shorts are a proven way to get discovered, how do you increase your views with each upload?

We’ve got one suggestion. Before you post anything, research different topics to see how many views they’re getting on YouTube. Use that information to create the best possible Short, which is one that grabs the viewer’s attention and makes them watch in full. After that, it’s up to YouTube’s algorithm. As more people watch your Shorts, YouTube may place them on the viral Shorts carousel.

Topic research is the most important part, but it’s also time-consuming. Without the proper tools, you’d have to do countless YouTube searches and calculations to find viral opportunities.

Want to expedite the process? Use this one tool to get the data you need and increase Shorts views.

How to See the Most-Viewed Videos on YouTube

The secret to increasing Shorts views is simple. If you want the best chance of going viral, use the Most Viewed Videos tool. This digital gadget shows you the most-viewed videos on YouTube by genre or topic. After using it, you’ll know which videos are trending and whether it’s a good idea to capitalize on huge, cultural moments.

Here’s what the Most Viewed tool looks like:

With this tool, you get:

• A search bar for researching topics
• A sort feature that shows results in three ways: total views, views per hour, and engagement.
• A date range feature showing results over the last 48 hours, seven days, 30 days, or six months.
• Lots of search filters. You can view videos by:
  • a channel's subscriber size
  • a specific number of views per hour
  • searching videos across 22 genres
  • searching videos in different countries
  • and more...

Want an in-depth tour of this tool? Watch our video tutorial for a visual rundown:

How to Get More Views on YouTube Shorts as a Small Creator

YouTube Shorts provide the biggest benefit for small, undiscovered channels. If you have less than 1,000 subscribers, here’s what you should do to increase Shorts views.

Returning to the Most Viewed tool, we’re going to run some topic searches in five simple steps:

1. Set the country filter to Any so you get results for as many videos as possible.
2. Go to the search bar and type #Shorts. YouTube advised creators to use this hashtag when Shorts were announced. This search term will show you brief, vertical videos instead of lengthy, horizontal ones.
3. After typing #Shorts, hit the spacebar and add your channel’s niche or a similar topic. That could be gardening, Minecraft, Bitcoin, seafood recipes, literally anything.
4. Set the channel filter to Up to 1K subscribers. This helps you find content from small creators getting lots of Shorts views.
5. On the sort menu, select Views Per Hour. This lets you know how viral a video/video topic is.

When you run this search, be sure to do it multiple times while changing the date range. See which videos are getting the most views per hour within the past 48 hours, seven days, 30 days, and beyond. You can also experiment with the extra filters, such as video category, views, and views per hour.

This strategy shows you which Shorts people enjoy. So when you find videos with many views per hour, watch them in full. Dissect the visual elements and assess how entertaining the video is. Take notes on what you think interested viewers the most.

We’ve noticed that gaming videos become entertaining Shorts, so that’s worth looking into. If you’re a gaming creator, check out the views per hour on these Minecraft Shorts in the past seven days:

The top result shows a gaming channel, CloudTurtlez, getting 261.9 views per hour on a Minecraft Short. Considering the channel only has 363 subscribers, that’s a nice amount of views for a small creator.

And how about these results for the multiplayer game Among Us?

Here we have another small channel with 448 subscribers getting 1,000 views per hour on a Short.

How to Get Free Access to the Most-Viewed Videos Tool

So far, we’ve shown you how to research popular Shorts for any genre on YouTube. Now the only thing left to do is get the Most Viewed tool, run some searches, and use what you’ve discovered to increase Shorts views.

Getting the tool is quick and easy; simply click here to download vidIQ for free. Your free download gives you limited access to the Most Viewed tool, but you'll need a Pro or Boost subscription to get full access.

Here’s how to find the tool on YouTube after you’ve downloaded vidIQ:

1. Log in to YouTube.
2. Click your profile icon and select YouTube Studio from the drop-down menu.
3. On the left navigation menu, scroll down and click Most Viewed.

That’s it! Now you can find viral Shorts opportunities. This tool will help you as you narrow down topics, post your first batch of Shorts, and get your YouTube channel discovered.