YouTube’s new tool for creators tells them what their audience is searching for

What if you knew what YouTube viewers who watched your videos were searching for on the site?

This week, YouTube rolled out a brand new feature for content creators that tells you just that. It’s called Search Insights. If you blinked, you might have missed it as YouTube rolled out this new tool for creators fairly quietly, with an announcement that appears to have only been posted on its Creator Insiders video channel.

The Search Insights tool tells content creators which keywords YouTube’s users are searching for across the platform. It also provides them with searches that your channel’s viewers are searching for, too. If you produce videos, you don’t need us telling you how extremely helpful this data could be. It almost feels like you’ve been granted access to a YouTube search cheat code. And you might not have even noticed it yet.

It almost feels like you’ve been granted access to a YouTube search cheat code. And you might not have even noticed it yet.

According to YouTube, the feature is currently only able to provide data over the past month from users in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, and India. It’s also currently only available for search terms in English. However, with all that said, many creators will definitely find this data useful.

How to use Search Insights on YouTube.

Open your YouTube Studio Dashboard and click on Analytics from the sidebar menu. Do you notice the new tab labeled “Research at the very end of the menu options on the Channel Analytics page? Select Research and you’ve landed on the Search Insights tool.

Go to the Research tab on the Analytics page.
Credit: Mashable Screenshot

Type any search term or topic on the Searches Across YouTube tab and you’ll be presented with a list of relevant terms that are searched on YouTube. Each term will be ranked High, Medium, or Low based on the search volume of that particular keyword or phrase on the platform. You can choose to view keywords from all of the 5 countries that YouTube currently includes in the data or you can break it down to just see the data from one of those countries. 

Search queries for the term “Twitter” in the Search Insights tool.
Credit: Mashable Screenshot

Now, here’s where it’ll feel like you’re cheating. If you click on the All Searches button, a menu will drop down providing users with another option called Content Gaps Only. Select that option and click apply. If a term appears with the “content gap” label, YouTube is informing you that users are either not finding what they’re looking for when searching for that term or the relevant videos are out of date or low in quality. With this tool, YouTube is basically telling creators where there are opportunities for your video to stand out and for your content to get noticed.

See where the content gaps are on YouTube.
Credit: Mashable Screenshot

Over on the Your Viewers’ Searches tab, YouTube provides all the same keyword search data, content gaps included, but only from the search data its collected from users who’ve already viewed your own content. This is a great way to discover some content ideas so you can better serve your audience.

In addition, creators can also save particular keywords in the Saved tab which acts like a bookmark feature so you can easily monitor keywords and terms you’d regularly check out.

It’s very interesting that YouTube is providing this data to creators. Similar types of search query information has generally only been available from third-parties and at a cost. Now, any YouTube creator can dive into what their audience is hoping to find, take inspiration from that, and delivery to the platform’s viewers.