As a YouTube creator, you can learn a lot about your audience by regularly checking the comment section. You’ll discover a few things below each video, such as the number of total comments and how many likes/replies they’ve received. If you go beyond the numbers and read each comment, you’ll learn even more. 

Die-hard viewers often share video ideas and valuable feedback you need to see. The more you 

 and encourage their ideas, the tighter your community will become.

It’s incredible to see helpful suggestions of any kind, especially when you're just starting out. But did you know you can glean extra information from the hundreds of YouTube comments you receive?

What Creators Can Learn From YouTube Comments

On the YouTube mobile app, you’ll find more than a list of comments below each video. YouTube has upgraded the section to include helpful information about who comments on your content.

We don’t have a name for this feature yet (and perhaps YouTube doesn’t either), but here’s what the tool displays:

When the commenter subscribed to your channel.

How many subscribers the commenter has on their channel.

How the commenter interacts with you, such as how many comments they’ve posted on your channel and the likes/replies you’ve left on their comments.

Snippets of previous conversations with commenters, plus the option to jump to the video where each conversation occurred.

The commenter’s YouTube channel banner, which should communicate the creator’s niche (tech, gaming, cooking, beauty, etc.).

To learn more about the new comment feature and its valuable insights, watch our latest video, “Who Posts The Most YouTube Comments on Your Videos?”

How to Find Comment Insights on YouTube [New]

When you want to learn more about the viewers who comment on your videos, follow these steps:

Open the YouTube app on your mobile device.

Navigate to a public video you’ve uploaded, then scroll down to the comment section.

Find a comment/commenter you’d like to investigate. To the left of the comment, click on the channel icon beside the commenter’s name.

Next, you’ll see a screen filled with information about how the commenter interacts with you. It’ll contain everything we listed above, and here’s what the screen looks like:

This tool is filled with information, so be sure to check it out. Regardless of your subscriber count, these highly engaged viewers are worth getting to know!

Man pointing to vidIQ Fan 618 Comments on YouTube with vidIQ logo and colorful background

Do you know who your most engaged viewers are? The ones who comment on most of your videos with encouragement and helpful tips? If not, here's how to find out.

Find Out Who Posts the Most Comments on Your YouTube Videos

. The video-segmenting feature, which allows users to click a timestamp and jump to any point in a video, now comes with a scrolling chapter list. This interactive panel is large, highly browseable, and appears on the right side of a YouTube video.

When you activate the feature, it looks something like this:

 and how to add them to the description of your YouTube videos. 

We also praised their ability to segment multi-layered topics, which helps your audience digest ‘how-to’ content or in-depth reviews. But a lesser-known benefit is how these timestamps can push your video to the top of Google search results. That’s an invaluable resource for growing on YouTube because seriously - who doesn’t want more views from the world’s largest search engine?

Every creator, especially those on YouTube’s competitive platform, deserves a slice of the SEO, video-segmenting pie. To claim yours, just keep reading.

How to Access the YouTube Chapters Upgrade

At first glance, you may overlook the new chapter upgrade because the tool is slightly hidden. To make sure you don’t miss it, follow these steps:

1. Find a YouTube video displaying chapters on its timeline.

 If you can't find one, just watch the video below. It’s our tutorial about how to access the video chapters upgrade, which of course, has several chapters to experiment with:

2. Click play, then navigate to a chapter by clicking any position on the video timeline.

 When you have one selected, the name of the chapter should appear below the video’s progress bar, as shown below.

3. Next to the chapter title, you should see a right-facing arrow.

 Click it to expand a large panel that lets you browse/select all the chapters in a video.

The good thing about this feature is that it’s completely retroactive. If you create timestamps for your existing videos, you'll start to see those upgraded video chapters appear.

On the YouTube mobile app, you get the same functionality. Simply tap on a chapter within the video player, and it will show a list of every chapter associated with the video.

YouTube Video Chapters: Do They Decrease Channel Watch Time?

When we talk about video chapters, we try to emphasize how valuable they are for introducing viewers to your content. Instead of pressing play on a video and wondering what it entails, your audience can essentially view an outline.

However, our viewers - the vidIQ community - always ask the same controversial question about video chapters. They want to know how video chapters affect a channel’s 

. After all, encouraging viewers to skip around to different points in a video cant be good for retention, can it?

Don’t spend too much time worrying about the numbers. 

Overall, video chapters are a small part of your YouTube channel’s success. They won’t make or break the journey, and the feature provides value for your viewers.

As an example, take a look at one of our top-performing tutorials, “

” This video has more than half a million views, and it has several video chapters throughout. To have reached such a high number, we’re not sacrificing as many views or Watch Time as one might think.

And remember, if your video segment gets recommended on Google search, that’s another reason to keep using video chapters. Those Googe displays consume a lot of real estate on a mobile screen, giving your video a better chance of being clicked on.

If you want to take your YouTube channel to the next level and 

 then make sure to download vidIQ. Join over 1 million other users and use vidIQ to help you research YouTube, analyze videos, audit your own channel, and take actionable steps. 

And if you’re really serious about growing your channel, sign up for exclusive access to the 

 and learn how to launch a successful YouTube channel in just 30 days. 

YouTube video chapters interface showing timestamps and thumbnails for video navigation.

Are you using timestamps to create video chapters? If not, YouTube just upgraded the feature so you may want to start.

Why You Should be Using YouTube Video Chapters

We all want to grow our YouTube channels and while we heavily rely on our analytics, sometimes it's those little tips that can really help us.

While we need to focus on the major metrics such as CTR, Retention, Watch Time, etc. we shouldn't forget to focus on the little tweaks that could end up having a very positive impact too.

On today's episode of TubeTalk, Alan Spicer and I chat about these quick wins that anyone can do on any channel size. Discover how leveraging the following can give your channel a boost:

Why You Must 'Niche Down' if You Want to Succeed on YouTube

Focusing in on just one type of video content can really make you stand out as a YouTube creator. It can also make your YouTube channel grow super fast! Find out more 

TubeTalk has been informing video creators and marketers since 2014, and is one of the most respected and listened to podcasts in the online video industry. Don't forget to SUBSCRIBE to TubeTalk on your favorite podcast app so you never miss an episode!

You can also find the complete list of all the 

Man with tongue piercing smiling next to TubeTalk logo on blue and white background

On this episode of TubeTalk, you will learn 5 quick and easy ways to help your channel grow.

5 Quick & Easy Tips for Growing Your YouTube Channel

When you created your YouTube channel, you probably had an idea of what your videos would be about. Whether you wanted to create Fortnite gaming tutorials, comedic sketches, or hours upon hours of pranks, you at least had 

But here’s a question worth asking yourself: 

Does your audience know what your channel is about? 

It almost seems silly to ask, especially if you’ve been pumping out very specific content. Nonetheless, it’s worth answering to make sure you’re on the right track. For example, if you think your channel is about one topic while your audience thinks it’s about something totally different, that tiny misconception could block your channel’s growth.

Fortunately, a new panel within the YouTube Studio can help. To see if you and your audience are on the same page about the content you create, just keep reading.

YouTube’s ‘Audience Watched’ Panel Is a Data Goldmine

Most likely, your audience watches a wide variety of YouTube videos within your niche. To get a glimpse of what that content is - and whether that proves you have a clear, concise channel by comparison - make your way to YouTube’s new audience panel:

From most YouTube desktop screens, click your profile image in the top right corner and go to the YouTube Studio.

You should arrive at the main analytics screen. In the uppermost menu, click on the ‘Audience’ tab.

About a third of the way down the screen, probably on the right side, you’ll see a panel called ‘Other videos your audience watched’.

You’ll know you’ve reached the panel when you see something that looks like this:

Or, if you need some extra guidance and would rather hear and see the instructions in real-time, watch our video tutorial:

Not Seeing Any Audience Data? Here’s Why

While some of you may see the ‘audience watched’ panel above, a lot of you might not because of a lack of data.

There are a few reasons why no data is appearing in this panel. It might be because you're violating YouTube’s Community Guidelines or your content is made for kids, which means YouTube won’t collect any audience information. But most likely, it’s because you don't have enough data on your YouTube channel.

To get a more scientific reason for this issue, we went to our beloved vidIQ community to see what their ‘audience watched’ panels look like. 

After creating a poll on our Community Tab, we discovered that 13% of creators in our community found the panel and could see some data. Unfortunately, another 18% could see the panel but no data. And much worse, 14% said they couldn't see the panel at all. The remaining 55% chose a throwaway option, which said, "I’m going to vote here to spoil your data." I guess we walked right into that one, but still, it kind of hurt. We laughed it off in the end. Sort of.

This poll tells us less than half of our typical vidIQ audience is able to see this panel (with data). Our typical audience includes channels under 1,000 subscribers, less than 4,000 hours of Watch Time, and any channel working toward YouTube monetization. 

So that could be a reason some channels (or yours) have zero data. You might need to increase your channel’s Watch Time so YouTube has enough data to work with.

If You Have Zero Audience Watched Data, Use This vidIQ Tool Instead

If you aren't getting any data from the ‘audience watched’ panel, vidIQ has an alternative. As long as you have vidIQ installed, follow this path to get the data you need:

In your YouTube Studio homepage, go to the left menu and click ‘Channel Audit’.

On the next screen, you should see a huge report card on your channel. Scroll down, look to the right, and find a section called ‘Top Suggested’:

Free users can see this section, but paid users can click on it and get a full list of videos. This is essentially what YouTube’s ‘audience watched’ tool would have shown you.

How to Use the 'Other Videos Your Audience Watched' Panel

OK, back to the YouTube audience tool itself. This panel shows you what your audience watched on YouTube over the last seven days. At the time of writing, it shows you 15 videos split into three pages, and you can click on either the video title or the channel’s name to view the content. These videos aren’t sorted by age, the number of views, or channel size, but it’s worth looking through all of them if you can.

Now, here comes the real question: Why is this so important? The basic premise is that the content your audience watches on other channels should be the content they enjoy watching on your channel. That’s how YouTube encourages you to use this tool. You can use it to find new video topics, title and thumbnail ideas, and collaboration opportunities.

And here’s the most important thing to know: 

No matter what you, the creator, think your channel is about, your audience thinks it’s about the topic in your 'audience watched' panel.

How to Research ‘Audience Watched’ YouTube Data

OK, let’s do an experiment using the vidIQ channel. In our ‘audience watched' panel, we should see a list of videos that reflect our target audience.

How to Get Your First 1,000 Subscribers on YouTube in 2020

How to Stop Haters, Trolls, and Spammers on YouTube

How to Color Grade in Adobe Premiere Pro for Beginners

How to Get 100 Subscribers on YouTube Every Day

Dream & MrBeast Gaming Speedrunning 10 Million Subscribers Live 

It's great to see our friends at Think Media on the list. And YouTube is right on the money with a video about how to get your first 1,000 subscribers in 2020. That's the type of content we make, no doubt. 

Nick Nimmin is also on the list with a video about haters, trolls, and spammers. We recently did a video on 

Interestingly, there’s a video about color grading in Adobe Premiere Pro, a video editor. That's something we don't cover on the vidIQ channel, so YouTube doesn't always get it right when it comes to mixed audiences. And finally, another video we're happy to be connected with is fourth on the list: How to get 100 subscribers on YouTube.

But the next two are subscriber battles, which is cause for concern. We’ve tested the topic on the vidIQ channel with great success, gaining tons of subscribers from each video. However, they aren't necessarily what we cover every single day. Instead, we're about YouTube education and growth.

If YouTube suggests this content to our audience, they may be left a little disappointed. Everything else on the list looks pretty good, though. If anything, this panel confirms we should do more videos about how to get a certain number of subscribers, how to grow your channel, how to get 100 subscribers every day, and how to get more views.

Can you see the value of this panel and its data? We've been able to learn so much about our YouTube channel in two minutes.

How to Track YouTube Channels That Share Your Audience

With the new ‘audience watched’ panel, YouTube empowers creators to research the targeted and mixed audiences on their channel. But, guess what? vidIQ has a tool to help you track the audiences you share with other creators.

As mentioned earlier, you can click on any of the videos in this audience watch panel to jump straight to the watch page for that video. Well, you can also do this from our channel audit tool. Once you’re on the watch page, next to the likes and dislikes, you'll see a vidIQ button that looks like this:

Next, click the button to reveal an ‘Add competitor’ menu option. Once you select that, you can add the channel of the video you’re currently watching to your competitor list. That allows you to track their most successful videos via views per hour.

If you share an audience as YouTube already suggests, it's likely you can make similar content. It's more likely to be suggested by YouTube and most importantly, watched and enjoyed by more viewers within that audience.

So, what does your audience think your YouTube channel is about? If you’re not sure, all you have to do is follow the data.

If you're new to vidIQ, our creator-obsessed goal is to educate you on your YouTube journey. We help you 

 and create an outstanding career on YouTube, one you can be proud of. For competitor research tools, video analysis, and helpful channel audits, 

And if you’re really serious about growing your YouTube views and subscribers, sign up for exclusive access to the 

 and learn how to launch a successful YouTube Channel in just 30 days.

Laptop screen showing YouTube logo, pie chart, and bar graph with growth arrow.

YouTube recently released a new audience data tool. If you’re not sure who your audience is or how they behave, let’s explore all the ways it could get you more views.

How to Get More Views from YouTube’s Audience Data Tool

Phone numbers, passers-by, and license plate numbers are common things that often end up in YouTube video footage. But according to YouTube’s 

, certain types of sensitive information - even if recorded by mistake - are never OK to post on the platform.

If you need a reliable way to clear your video of anything that really shouldn't be there, YouTube is on top of the problem. 

To reduce the risk of identity theft and violation, the platform has created a tool for blurring objects and faces in creators’ videos. 

Best of all, the tool is free to use and easy to find in the YouTube Studio.

If you haven’t tried YouTube’s blur feature just yet, here’s everything you need to know to get started.

In the top right corner of YouTube, click on your profile icon and go to the YouTube Studio.

’. This will show you all of the uploaded content on your channel.

Mouse over the video you want to edit, then click the pencil icon to jump into that video.

The next thing you’ll see is a page titled ‘

’. On this screen, find the left navigation menu and click ‘

When the next page loads, you’ll see a video timeline. Go directly below this editor and click the link that says ‘

’. You should see two menu options appear, one to create a face blur and another for custom blurring.

For real-time guidance, watch our video tutorial on how to find this section of the YouTube Studio.

If you want to blur anything other than a face, your best option is to use YouTube’s custom blur tool. This feature allows you to place circular or rectangular blurs over different objects in a video.

A few weeks ago, we used the custom blur tool to hide an object in a vidIQ video. Rob, our YouTuber-in-residence recorded himself waving a red ‘subscribe’ button, and we were able to make it disappear - even with all those jerky movements.

This worked because YouTube lets you track the objects you’ve chosen to blur. All you have to do is find the Blur Behavior section on the video editor page and select ‘

’. If you don’t need to blur a moving object, select ‘

’ to keep everything in place. You can see both options in the screenshot below:

Once you make your selection, you can also reposition or resize your blur shape. To make Rob’s subscribe button disappear, we dragged a corner of the blur box, which is shown in the screenshot above, until it was big enough to hide everything underneath it.

Lastly, you can determine when a blur appears in your video. To do this, go to the video timeline and drag the marker to any point. Then navigate upward and use the time indexes to define the duration of your blur, as shown below:

The first time you try to blur a face, YouTube’s editor will spend a couple of minutes detecting all the faces in your video. When it does, you can easily select the ones you want to blur, as shown below:

Luckily, that’s the only piece of new information when it comes to blurring a face. If you want to reposition the blur, track it to a moving face, or make it appear at a certain timestamp, you can repeat the steps we’ve already outlined in the custom blur section.

As you experiment with these blur tools, you may notice that they sometimes behave strangely. That doesn't take away from their helpfulness or convenience, but these small hiccups are good to know about:

The tracking feature doesn't look perfect when you're editing, but it improves a lot when the video is fully processed.

It can take a few hours for edits to stick. In the meantime, viewers will be able to see the original, unblurred video, if it's public.

Sometimes the tool leaves faces unblurred for a fraction of a second, which can be frustrating.

We also noticed an odd error while editing blur timestamps. The message ‘Blur region must contain at least one checkpoint’ kept appearing in the editor. We’re not sure what that’s about, but we fixed it by starting over until the error disappeared.

As helpful as YouTube’s blur tool can be, most creators probably use off-platform software to blur faces and objects. Of course, not every video editor has that kind of technology. And to be fair, YouTube does a good job of blurring and tracking objects with its free tool.

However, if the tool doesn’t perform as promised, go back a few steps to catch the root of the problem. As frustrating as that sounds, it’s a better alternative than exposing someone’s identity or information (or your own) without permission.

Want To Learn More YouTube Tips and Tricks?

 then make sure to download vidIQ. Join over 1 million other users and use vidIQ to help you research YouTube, analyze videos, audit your own channel, and take actionable steps 

YouTube face blur and custom blur options highlighted with a blurred man's face and vidIQ logo

Have you ever needed to blur a face or a logo in one of your YouTube videos? Here's a quick and easy guide on how to do just that in YouTube Studio

How to Blur Anything You Need to in Your YouTube Video

Have you ever wondered what happens to the analytics on your video in its first 12 hours on YouTube? Well, wonder no more! To understand certain traffic source trends, we recorded a video timelapse to see exactly what happens. If you have the time, watch the below YouTube Short a couple of times to catch all the percentages and traffic sources:

Did you see anything interesting? Here are three things we noticed:

In the first few hours, notifications from your subscribers are king

. They made up 60% of our initial views, so be sure to make content your audience wants to watch.

After your video gets those early notification views, another traffic source comes into play: 

 An increase here means YouTube is testing your content in a more random fashion to see if people like it.

If a video is successful as browseable content, YouTube might start promoting it as 

vidIQ is a YouTube education channel, so we aim to create informative, searchable content. Within 12 hours, the video we studied for this timelapse was already being 

 - and that’s exactly how we planned it!

You can do the same thing. Keep reading our posts about how to succeed on YouTube and you’ll be one step closer to making it happen.

Join over 1 million other users and use vidIQ to help you research YouTube, analyze videos, audit your own channel, and take actionable steps today.

. Learn how to launch a successful YouTube Channel in just 30 days.

YouTube realtime analytics screen showing traffic sources and 706 views in last hour

Do you know what actually happens in the 12 hours after you publish to YouTube? We recorded the live analytics of a video to discover three keys to snagging more views.

What Happens When You Publish a YouTube Video? [Timelapse]

On YouTube, finding the perfect publishing frequency isn’t always that easy. If you post too often, your subscribers won’t have the time or energy to watch your content. And if you post too sporadically, viewers may abandon your channel when videos are slow to appear.

The sweet spot is different for each creator, and you'll only discover it by uploading more content and learning as much as you can about your audience. 

Posting more videos gives YouTube a chance to share some audience data with you, such as how many unique viewers you’re attracting each month. From there, you can determine how much content your audience is willing to consume, and thus, the best uploading frequency for your channel.

For more details, watch our latest video about finding that perfect number:

Whether you have years of experience or you’re just starting out, these powerful tips will help you upload the right amount of content to YouTube.

Can You Publish Too Much Content to YouTube?

Consistency is important on YouTube, but it only pays off when you have a reasonable uploading cadence. After all, your audience only has so much time in a day. YouTube understands this, and that’s why the platform will only send 

 to your subscribers every 24 hours. So for example

, if you post five videos in a day, only three of them will reach the notification bar on 

That’s why you should post a maximum of three videos every 24 hours.

Anything more may be pointless, especially if you want your video to be recommended across YouTube.

Here’s how that scenario works: In the first three to six hours of publishing a video, most of your views will come from subscribers clicking a notification. It’s the initial push that gets your video noticed, and the more clicks you get, the more 

 you’ll receive. Once YouTube realizes your video has a high view duration, the platform will share your content with more people.

If you plan to publish three videos daily, be sure to stagger them throughout the day - perhaps one for the morning, afternoon, and evening. Getting three notifications from the same channel at once is jarring, even for die-hard fans.

Can You Upload Too Little Content to YouTube?

On the other end of the spectrum, it’s possible to post way too sparingly on YouTube. Whether that can hurt your channel or not, the answer truly depends on the situation.

For example, an audience of 18 and younger may be more connected to the digital world. They're likely to be on YouTube and other social media platforms daily, and if you're a gaming channel, that’s ideal. Your audience could easily watch one of your videos every day, potentially more.

But on the flip side, what if your audience is busy mothers who work during the week? They may have only an hour or two on Sunday nights to watch your content. So in some way, your upload schedule has to align with your viewers’ lifestyle.

There's a good chance your viewing habits on YouTube, as a creator, are somewhat aligned with your target audience. Ask yourself these four questions to gain more insight:

Are you a loyal subscriber who’s willing to wait for new content?

Or, do you get restless when videos are released too slowly and look for a more consistent channel?

What were your answers? If you and your audience share the same interests, you probably consume content the same way and should adjust your posting schedule accordingly.

How to Find The Right Publishing Schedule For Your Audience

By now, you’ve probably gleaned that the best way to pinpoint your weekly upload number is to study your audience. Luckily, the YouTube Studio and its wealth of analytics contain everything you need to know, so here's a quick way to analyze your audience:

In the YouTube Studio, go to the left navigation menu and click ‘Analytics’.

On the main channel analytics page, go to the uppermost menu and click the ‘Audience’ tab.

In the top right corner, change the time period to ‘Last 90 Days’. This gives the maximum amount of data for unique viewers and average views per visitor.

After doing all that, you should see a page that looks like this:

As you can see, the vidIQ YouTube channel got nearly 4 million views from unique visitors in the last 90 days (at time of writing). But overall, we got 7 million views total, which means the average viewer watched 1.7 videos on our channel. Of course, you want this number to be as high as possible, with each viewer watching all of your videos.

Also, unique viewers can be an indication of consistency.

 If you're posting all the time and giving your audience everything they want to watch, that number should rise. But if you're producing weird and wacky stuff your viewers didn’t sign up for, the unique viewer count will be lower.

When it comes to uploading frequency, your audience has the opportunity to watch all your videos if you post as often as they consume. However, if you're producing too much content for them to watch, your unique views may decline.

How often should you publish videos to YouTube? You can’t answer that without doing some audience analysis, so here’s everything you need to know.

YouTube Tips for Creators

Find Out Who Posts the Most Comments on Your YouTube Videos

Why You Should be Using YouTube Video Chapters

5 Quick & Easy Tips for Growing Your YouTube Channel

How to Get More Views from YouTube’s Audience Data Tool

How to Blur Anything You Need to in Your YouTube Video

What Happens When You Publish a YouTube Video? [Timelapse]

How to Find the Right Time to Publish on YouTube

How To Get a Custom URL For Your YouTube Channel

YouTube Shorts: What We Know About How They Work

How to Block Unwanted Ads on Your YouTube Content

How to Add Info Cards to Your YouTube Video

How to Find the Most Popular Subscribers to YOUR YouTube Channel