Recommendations help you discover more of the videos you love, whether it’s a great new recipe to try or your next favourite song. We share recommendations both on YouTube’s homepage and in the “Up next” section as a suggestion of what to watch next when you’re watching a video. We’re constantly testing, learning, and adjusting to recommend videos that are relevant to you. We take into account many signals, including your watch and search history (if enabled) as well as the channels you’ve subscribed to. We also consider your context, such as your country and time of day. For example, this helps us show you locally relevant news.
Another factor YouTube’s recommendation systems consider is whether others who clicked on the same video watched it to completion - a sign that the video is higher quality or enjoyable - or just clicked on it and shortly after starting to view the video, clicked away. We also ask users directly about their experience with individual videos and our recommendation systems using random surveys that appear on their home page and elsewhere throughout the app. We use this direct feedback to fine-tune and improve these systems for all users.
Recommendations as a suggestion of what to watch next when you’re watching a video
Controls to make recommendations more relevant to you
Our goal is to connect you with content you love, so we offer tools to help you shape your recommendations based on your interests. We also provide ways for you to tell us when we’re recommending something you aren’t interested in. For example, buttons on the homepage and in the “Up next” section allow you to filter and choose recommendations by specific topics. You can also click on “not interested” to signal to YouTube that a video or channel is not what you wanted to see at that time.
Resources
Reducing the spread of borderline content and harmful misinformation
Our commitment to openness means we may have content available on the platform that comes close to violating our policies but does not quite cross the line. We think it’s important to protect freedom of expression, but we set a high bar for what videos we display prominently in our recommendations on the YouTube homepage or through the “Up next” panel. We are constantly working to improve our systems to reduce recommendations on borderline content and videos that could misinform users in a harmful way, particularly in areas that rely on veracity - such as news, medicine, historical events, or science.