YouTube is a competitive place to make content. There are millions of channels out there, and each one is looking to gain more subscribers than the next. It's a place where new creators spend months, if not years, chasing their 

YouTube may be competitive, but it's important to remember that 

 — at least not directly. It's the people standing on either side of them that they compete with, not those floating above.

 you don't have to look far. Those are creators who:

Share the same audience as you (your viewers watch their videos too).

Without a doubt, you want to know these creators and how they operate on YouTube. That helps you understand your niche, find video ideas, and slowly improve your channel.

Ready to get started? Here's how to find your biggest competitors on YouTube.

Before finding your competitors, you must know what your audience searches for on YouTube. "Ultimate frisbee?" "Training pit bull puppies?" "Dewy makeup hacks?"

It depends on your niche, of course. But every channel has query-based entry points, or in other words, 

Why do you need to know this? Well, viewers don't see your videos only when they perform a search; they see content from competitors too.

what viewers are searching for on YouTube

. In that case, you can reverse-engineer the process to find other channels they watch (your competition).

Check the Research Panel in the YouTube Studio

If this sounds a bit complicated, don't worry. There's a 

 in the YouTube Studio, and it shows what your viewers are searching for overall.

. Set the first filter to "all searches," and make sure the geography filter is set to "all."

Here, you'll see a list of your viewers' searches on YouTube. As you scroll through this collection, look for keywords that best represent the videos you make. You can save relevant terms by clicking the bookmark symbol to the left.

2. Perform Some Searches with the Keywords You Found

Now that you know what viewers are searching for, it's time to do some testing. Take the keywords you just discovered and paste them into the YouTube search bar, one by one. With each search, take a look at the top video results. Which channels show up repeatedly?

Chances are, these are your biggest competitors on YouTube. They're covering the same topics as you, dominating search pages, and getting great exposure on the platform.

Here's a quick example of what we mean. vidIQ viewers search for a few things on YouTube, including:

We ran a YouTube search with each of these terms, and videos from the same channels kept popping up:

What does your list look like after doing this exercise? Be sure to keep it handy because we'll add more competitors in the next step.

3. Discover What Viewers Watch Outside of Your Channel

In the YouTube Studio, there's a helpful tool that shows which channels your viewers watch outside of your own. Browsing this panel does two things for your competitor search:

Confirm the competitors you've already found (this list should mirror the one you just created).

Ready to get started? Follow these steps to see what viewers are watching outside your channel.

3. Scroll down and find the panel that reads 

As we mentioned, you should see similarities between this list and the one you created. For example, we see videos from Channel Makers, Think Media, and Nick Nimmin.

. Now we can research even more creators (that we know our audience likes) to see what they're doing on YouTube and how we stack up against them.

Keep in mind that this panel shows channels watched in 

. That's not a lot of data, so research each channel and confirm they're actual competitors. Do they cover the same topics as you? Are they consistent on YouTube?

4. See Which Videos are Recommended Near Yours

Lastly, go to the video watch pages for your own content to see more competitors. This works best if you choose videos that represent your channel's focus, so try to click on the most relevant videos. For each video you choose, focus your attention on the right side of the screen.

This is where you'll see a list of video recommendations based on what you're currently watching or recently watched. It's a great place to find channels similar to yours, so take your time exploring!

You'll probably come across channels you've already seen, but keep scrolling. There's often a surprise or two you wouldn't have seen coming.

In our case, we spotted a video from Colin and Samir. They highlight successful creators on their YouTube channel (just like we do), but we're only discovering them at this stage of our research.

What does your list of competitors look like now? Ours grew a bit after completing all four steps:

Creating a list like this helps you find competitors to watch, analyze, and learn from on YouTube.

 change over time. As new channels emerge and viewers find new interests, you're bound to have fresh competition on YouTube.

Magnified YouTube logo on website homepage viewed through a magnifying glass on screen

Every creator has competition on YouTube. But who are they? Which channels should you watch, analyze, and try to beat?

How to Find Your Biggest Competitors on YouTube

A channel audit is an objective, in-depth look at how your YouTube videos are performing. It helps you analyze critical areas of your content — watch time, search traffic, click-through rates, etc. — and see if they’re working in harmony to grow your channel.

Fix the biggest problems within your content.

Double-down on YouTube strategies that worked.

So before you make another video, think of where you’re headed on YouTube. Are you on the road to more views and subscribers? What could you do to get there faster?

Here’s how to audit your YouTube channel and get the answers you need.

Without a dedicated tool, it takes a while to perform a YouTube audit. You have to find your best and worst-performing videos, and review a mountain of data around views and subscribers. You can find all of this in the YouTube Studio, but do you really want to spend hours digging for it?

. Rather than searching for stats, it pulls various reports 

 you. 

In fact, vidIQ has a dedicated tool for that purpose. It shows:

You can use some of the channel audit features with a free vidIQ account. But to get everything you see above, you’ll need to upgrade to vidIQ Pro ($10/month) or vidIQ Boost ($49/month).

3. The next thing you’ll see is a YouTube video with more installation details. To the right of that, click 

 in the left navigation bar of  the YouTube homepage.

 of the features in the channel audit tool — and here’s how to use it.

1. Check the Basic Stats: Views, Subscribers, Watch Time

On YouTube, you can get a general sense of your progress by looking at the number of views, subscribers, and watch time on your channel.

: The number of times people pressed play on your videos.

YouTube subscribers: Viewers who opted-in to see your videos appear in their feeds.

: The total amount of time viewers spent watching all your videos.

These stats are at the top of the channel audit tool, and they display automatically. Just use the time period selector (top-right corner) to see data from the last 30, 60, or 90 days. Then you can see how much your channel has grown or stagnated.

2. Find Your Channel’s Click-Through Rate

Click-through rate (CTR) is the percentage of people who clicked on your videos after seeing the thumbnails attached. A higher CTR leads to more views and watch time, so you’ll want to keep an eye on this metric.

CTR isn’t available in the channel audit tool, but you can find it in the YouTube Studio.

impressions and how they led to watch time

Here, you’ll see the number of impressions on your channel, and right below that, your 

For example, our CTR is 4.9% on the vidIQ channel. That means nearly 5% of people who saw our videos decided to click on them — at least in the month of June.

Want to increase your CTR? Here are six ways to get more people clicking on your content.

3. Look at Your Top-Performing YouTube Videos

Next, see which videos are outperforming others on your channel. Top-notch videos tend to have a few things in common:

You can see which videos make the cut by viewing the "

From the screenshots above, it's clear that videos about small YouTubers perform well on the vidIQ channel. Thanks to the channel audit tool, we'll keep exploring that topic in the future.

It’s also important to know which videos your viewers didn’t like. That gives you a clear example of what not to do, and you’ll find it easier to make enjoyable content for your audience.

Again, we’ll use the channel audit tool to find this. Just head to the “

According to this report, our YouTube live streams could use some work. They’re bringing in less views and even causing some people to unsubscribe. Every creator has content like this, so it's good to review these details and come up with solutions.

Search engine optimization is a big deal on YouTube. When a viewer searches for something to watch (that your channel covers), one of your videos should appear in the search results — preferably near the top.

It won’t happen overnight, but you can get there faster in three steps:

Place those terms in your video titles and descriptions.

The channel audit tool can help with that last step. As you can see, our top terms at vidIQ are YouTube Shorts, getting subscribers, and removing copyright claims.

We could do two things with this information:

Make more content about YouTube Shorts (because it’s ranking highly).

Try to rank higher for other topics we cover, such as “YouTube views” or “monetize YouTube channel.”

You can also look at your SEO score in the channel audit tool. On a scale of 1 to 50, it rates how well you’ve optimized your video titles, tags, and descriptions with relevant keywords.

 to see a list of videos you can optimize right now.

6. Review the Length of Your Video Titles

If your titles are too long, they’ll get cut off in some areas of the YouTube app (and even the desktop site). But that’s an easy fix. All you have to do is 

This works best for videos you’re naming for the first time. But what about older videos? Is it possible to shorten those titles without too much effort?

Yes and yes. In the channel audit tool, go to the section titled “

” Below that, you’ll see a number representing the 

If you click that number, you’ll see a list of titles that are too long to display at 100%. Spend some time condensing those headlines so viewers can read the whole thing.

7. Check the Quality of Your YouTube Thumbnails

Most of the time, viewers see the thumbnail on your video before anything else — and first impressions are everything.

If you have low-quality graphics, the audit tool will point them out. Simply go to the “

 section, then take a look at the number of low-resolution thumbnails on your channel.

You have nothing to worry about if the number is zero. But if it’s higher than that, go ahead and click the number to see which videos could be improved. Then you can swap the not-so-great images for quality ones.

Want to make your images stand out on YouTube? Read this thumbnail guide to discover nine helpful tips.

Mobile screen showing analytics app with overview, revenue, and discovery tabs visible.

No matter how well you're doing on YouTube, you could always benefit from a channel audit. Here's a 10-step guide to quickly review your content.

How to Do a YouTube Channel Audit: A 10-Step Checklist

You don't have to leave YouTube to promote your channel these days. Rather than throwing your videos on Instagram or Facebook first, it's often better (and easier) to stay right where you are. After all, there's a social network inside of YouTube itself.

 allows you to connect with viewers through media-rich posts, such as polls, images, GIFs, videos, and plain text. So when you aren't posting videos, it's a good idea to stay active on the Community tab and promote your channel with additional content.

But how does all of this work? Well, the Community tab is a proper promotion tool because it reaches beyond your subscribers. After some testing, we found that a diverse group of people engage with our posts — both viewers and non-viewers. So you could introduce your channel to new viewers just by posting on the Community tab.

For now, YouTube says you need 500 subscribers to 

. But once you have it, here's how to promote your channel without leaving YouTube.

To truly stand out, start a conversation on the Community tab. People love answering questions, participating in polls, and talking about things that interest them in their personal lives.

Imagine being face-to-face with one of your subscribers for the first time. You probably wouldn't ask them to watch your latest video and abruptly walk away. There would be a conversation first, and you would hopefully learn about their dreams, goals, and desires. 

Here's an example of a unique conversation starter:

We asked this question on our channel because we're YouTube educators, and we want to understand the challenges creators — our audience — face. Some of those hurdles are…

Needing more subscribers to build a community

Want to reach your target audience on YouTube? Start a conversation that's relevant to them, and you'll end up promoting your channel in an empathetic way.

Polls are your secret weapon for YouTube channel promotion. Viewers love them because it takes two seconds and one finger tap to answer a multiple-choice question. With such little work involved, it's pretty easy to get votes — especially since YouTube shares Community posts with viewers 

That means promoting your channel through

 is more than possible. Most of our polls get 20,000 or more votes, which is a lot of attention.

But first, here are some best practices for creating polls:

Ask a question your audience cares about.

Write a simple question that's easy to understand.

Add an "other" option to the poll choices, then ask people to comment their answers below (more engagement).

Ready to promote your latest YouTube video? You can do that successfully on the Community tab, but only if you take an interactive approach.

Instead of posting a link and asking people to watch your video, follow the problem-solution format:

Ask a relevant question in a poll format (present the problem).

Use "yes" or "no" as the poll answer choices.

Share a link to a video that solves the problem (present the solution).

Check out the example below. We wanted to promote our new video about 

, so we asked viewers if they've ever received a copyright claim or strike on YouTube. Spoiler alert: Most people have.

With this poll, we helped people acknowledge a problem in their lives. Then we nudged them to watch our video and discover a good solution.

How often should you post on the Community tab? There's no answer to fit all scenarios, but you can start with a few posts a week and see how people respond. Another idea is to post something when you don't have a new video coming out as a way to keep in touch with viewers.

No matter what you choose, know that Community tab engagement can be massive. In the last 28 days, we got more impressions from Community tab posts than from YouTube videos — 2.5 million versus 1.8 million. You don't want to miss out on that much 

At this point, the Community tab is too valuable to ignore. Using it will uncover deep facts about your audience, help you grow a community, and increase your channel's visibility.

Learn how to create end screens that recommend extra videos to your audience.

Man pointing to 84,736 impressions with 29% increase on YouTube analytics screen

Want to promote your channel without ever leaving YouTube? Here are four tips for building a community and increasing your channel's visibility all in one place: the YouTube Community tab.

4 Tips to Promote Your Channel on the YouTube Community Tab

We live in a fast-paced world, which means your opinions won’t always age well. They can sound offensive, off-topic, or downright cringey when you read them several weeks later.

But don't worry. It's easy to find your comments on YouTube, then edit or delete them as you see fit.

 on the history type panel (right side of the page).

Next, you'll see a panel showing your YouTube comment history. Scroll through the comments and identify the ones you want to edit or delete.

1. To delete a comment, return to the YouTube comments panel (steps shown above). Find a comment you want to delete and click 

2. On the next page, click the three dots beside your comment and select 

1. To edit a comment, return to the YouTube comments panel (steps shown above). Click on the video containing the comment you want to change.

2. Next, YouTube will send you to the video watch page containing your comment. Click the three dots beside your comment and select 

How to Review YouTube Live Stream Comments

Now that we’ve taken care of regular comments, let’s review the ones you've left on live streams.

1. Return to the history type panel (steps shown above) and click 

2. Browse your previous live chat messages. Delete or edit them the same way you would a regular YouTube comment (steps shown above).

2 Drawbacks of YouTube’s Comment Review Tool

On the surface, this tool does what it promises and allows you to review and delete comments. But here’s the catch (and it’s a pretty big one): 

If you want to do any of this with ease or speed, you’re out of luck.

Filters and search parameters to narrow your results.

If your goal is to dig through years of comments to find the embarrassing ones, it won’t be easy or efficient. However, this is the way to go until there's a better way to see your comments on YouTube.

Did you know you can also see who posts the most comments on your YouTube videos? Here's a short guide to show you how.

YouTube comment examples from vidIQ showing engagement with likes and replies icons.

If you post lots of YouTube comments, you might want to review or delete them now and then. Here’s how to search your comment history and make those changes.

How to See and Edit Your YouTube Comment History

Do you have a list of video ideas you're dying to shoot? Well, not so fast: You have some work to do before those ideas become popular YouTube videos.

After all, these concepts are somewhat new to you. 

 It's better to be skeptical of your ideas and put them through a validation process. For example, is your next video timely enough to get thousands of views? Will your subscribers appreciate the topic? Does the idea stand out from similar YouTube videos?

There's only one way to find out for sure. Here's how to test your ideas and see if they're worth pursuing on YouTube.

Some videos get more views because they're posted at the right time. Knowing this, it makes sense to ask a few questions before hitting the record button. For example, 

This is typically the case with holiday content. You wouldn't expect a turkey and dressing tutorial to go viral on Halloween because its still "spooky season." Viewers are clicking on videos about candy, costumes, and Halloween games. If you post the same video closer to Thanksgiving ⁠— when turkeys are top of mind ⁠— you'll get more views.

But trends come in all variations, not just the holiday kind. That's why checking 

 is an excellent way to discover what's hot and what's not. You can view trending topics worldwide or search any term to see how popular it is now versus other time frames.

For example, the Nascar Cup Series is happening this month. Google Trends shows that "Nascar race today" was searched heavily in the last few days.

2. Did You Ask Viewers What They Want to Watch?

The days of guessing what viewers want to watch are long gone. If you have 500 subscribers, you can ask them directly using the 

The Community tab is a social network inside of YouTube itself, and you can post images, videos, GIFs, and more. But the best part? 

to collect viewers' opinions of what they would or wouldn't watch.

We do this often on the vidIQ channel. If we don't know which angle to take for a video, we leave the final decision to the viewers!

3. Did You Bring a Fresh Perspective to a Popular Topic?

These days, YouTube is more competitive than ever. Thousands of channels dominate the most popular topics on the internet, from gaming to beauty to music.

But all's not lost. You can penetrate a saturated niche with solid YouTube research.

 that already exist for the topic. Ask yourself what's good about those videos and what's not so great about them. Overall, you're trying to 

see what's missing from the conversation 

Need an example? Watch the first 20 seconds of this video, "NFTs, Explained."

Johnny Harris doesn't begin the video by introducing himself or his channel like most finance creators. Instead, he strings together news articles and broadcasts about non-fungible tokens. Everything is moving quickly, and there's the sound of a ticking clock ⁠— or perhaps a bomb about to explode. It's intriguing, hard to click away from, and most importantly, 

4. Did You Personalize the Experience for Viewers?

Don't forget to consider your audience when you're testing video ideas. Each one should connect with them personally and not a broad group of viewers.

 says personally-relevant content is more important than viral videos, according to YouTube's Culture and Trends Report. That's a revelation in the era of viral TikToks and YouTube Shorts.

making personalized content is essential.

 After you've done everything you can to 

 and trending topics, the only thing left is…you. Your personality (and relatability) is the tie-breaker that keeps viewers on your channel instead of someone else's.

Here's how to understand viewers and create a bond with them:

Learn what they like, dislike, and dream of in their daily lives.

Talk to them on the YouTube Community tab.

Join the Facebook, Discord, or Reddit communities they love.

Take the insights you learn from this journey and weave it into your content. That will help you make better, more relevant videos for your audience.

And while you're at it, here's a guide for coming up with amazing video ideas.

Woman with camera and lenses inspecting photos at a white desk with a laptop and notebook

Some video ideas will bring you views, and others will hardly scratch the surface. Here are 4 ways to test your YouTube ideas before you film them.

How to Test a YouTube Video Idea Before You Start Filming

Not long ago, YouTube released a tool that shows 

. It was initially rolled out to YouTube Premium subscribers, but now it's available for all mobile and desktop viewers.

This feature is a huge step forward for 

. Instead of pressing play and not knowing what to expect, anyone can see the best part of a video and fast-forward to that scene.

So, what's the catch? Well, it's not exactly geared toward video creators. That same tool lets viewers skip around, see the good stuff, and leave your video prematurely.

upside. The most replayed tool shows you which scenes viewers loved the most. Studying those moments will help you understand what excites your audience and hopefully make better content.

YouTube's new tool shows more than just the popular parts of a video. In fact, the first thing you'll notice is a graph flowing up and down on your video's timeline. It shows the most 

 least popular moments within your content.

This graph only appears when a viewer seeks through your video to find different scenes. And as they do, they'll eventually reach a section where the graph peaks. This high point is called 

— the scene or collection of scenes viewers watched repeatedly.

At that moment, YouTube shows three things on the screen:

A thumbnail preview of the most replayed segment

How to Use 'Most Replayed' Insights to Make Better Content

Which part of your video do viewers love the most? A new YouTube tool shows that exact moment, but there’s just one catch: Your audience can see it too.

YouTube Tips for Creators

How to Find Your Biggest Competitors on YouTube

How to Do a YouTube Channel Audit: A 10-Step Checklist

4 Tips to Promote Your Channel on the YouTube Community Tab

How to See and Edit Your YouTube Comment History

How to Test a YouTube Video Idea Before You Start Filming

How to See the Most Replayed Scenes from Your YouTube Video

Why Clickbait Is Actually Good for Your YouTube Channel

YouTube's New Keyword Research Tool: Will It Boost Your Views?

7 Ways to Build a Strong Personal Brand on YouTube

How to Collab with Big Creators as a Small YouTube Channel

8 YouTube Podcasts to Help Grow Your Channel

Matt Koval Shares More Creator Advice After Nearly a Decade at YouTube