Answer: Yahoo Mail?
Really?
A little known fact is that YouTube.com is the second largest search engine in the world. While it’s not exactly a search engine per se, it is used like a search engine with different results: videos instead of websites.
However, people do the same thing they do on google except they have obviously a different result in mind. As a result, the types of things people search for are different. In contrast to Google though, there really isn’t a tool that most SEO’s know about when it comes to uncovering what exactly are being searched in the mammoth of a site: YouTube.
But as time goes on and as Google begins to do more advertising, there is a larger need to truly understand what is driving that website in terms of behavior. One solution is:
YouTube Keyword Estimates on Google Trends
Yes, within the Google Trends site, you can get a feel for what searches do occur in it versus Google.
For instance, we know two very common phrases in google are “facebook” and “porn.”
We also know that there has been a recent craze over “cardi b” and Korean Kpop stars “BTS.”
Comparing these 4 distinct phrases via Google:
You can see that facebook dominates with porn right after it and cardi b and bts being trounced by the two other regular incumbents in google.
However, if you look at the search volume within YouTube:
The search volume for the popular musicians is VERY MUCH different. They actually OUTdo their competitors in the youtube search world and basically represent the opposite in terms of keyword search trends.
However, how do we figure out what keyword volume truly exists in YouTube?
One solution: look at the keyword phrases that generate traffic to the website.
In our examination of the top keywords that organically generate traffic to the website, we found the following to be true:
Top 10 Keywords Generating Organic Traffic for YouTube
- yahoo mail
- worldstarhiphop
- mother’s day 2017
- sex
- flashlight
- happy birthday
- despacito
- music
- nfl
- amazon
Yahoo Mail you ask?
Do a search for it. Initially, you’ll see a full page of results without any videos on page 1. However, if you are smart enough to click to page 2, you’ll see that in the 11th result (and potentially 12th), there are 2 videos to:
and
Basically, there are enough searches to generate tons of traffic to the site and even traffic to these 2 videos. While it’s not as apparent in the 1st video, the second one has close to 1 million views.
Unfortunately, since Google is constantly changing their SERP (search engine result page) features, we don’t see much in terms of the #2 search above: “worldstarhiphop.” Also, our SEO tool sometimes lags a little in terms of the data it provides. However, if you look at #3, you’ll see that the data is relatively accurate.
Two videos sit in the SERP quite nicely giving anyone who searches for those phrases an attractive item to click on.
If you click on the second video result here, you’ll probably shoot back at us: “This isn’t YouTube!”
However, Fortune magazine figured out to embed the video into the SERP and get it to point to their site instead of depending on the traffic that goes to YouTube. However, the message at the bottom is quite reflective of the question you might be asking yourself: “Why are people even searching for a phrase with 2017 in it?”
They point out because (in the yellow highlighted area):
And finally, we were trying our darndest to find what sort of keywords people were searching withIN YouTube. After a bit of speculation and comparison, we think these are 5 very viable candidates.
5 Most Searched Keywords in YouTube (Estimated) – May 2018
- music
- funny
- sex
- cardi b
- bts
This keyword data can not only be helpful for YouTube, but also for search engine marketing. Check out the recent report on the MANY Key Benefits to SEM here.
