YouTube creators can now optimize educational videos with additional metadata that will appear in search results in the future.
The update, announced in YouTube’s weekly news digest, includes some smaller changes from creators worth knowing about.
Here’s a recap of the latest news for YouTube creators, starting with a metadata update.
New YouTube metadata for educational videos
YouTube is bringing additional metadata to educational English-language videos.
During the upload process, you can tag the video as educational via the drop-down menu, where you can select a category.
Selecting Education as the video category grants access to a new set of metadata that you can use to describe content.
New metadata fields include:
- video type
- Academic system
- education level
- Exams, Courses or Standards
Each of these fields is optional. You can use some, all or none of them during the upload process.
This is an important update for YouTube Channels, as this metadata will be added to YouTube’s search results in the future to help viewers determine if the content meets their needs.
This is another tool you can use to optimize your videos and make them stand out in search.
This has been rolled out to all English educational videos.
Additional updates for YouTube creators
Several smaller updates this week include a new way to add custom thumbnails, and a new way to highlight Shorts videos on the desktop.
Custom Thumbnails on Mobile Devices
Image credit: Screenshot from YouTube.com/CreatorInsider, February 2022.YouTube enables creators to add custom thumbnails when uploading videos using the mobile app.
Previously, custom thumbnails could only be added when uploading videos on desktop.
The update is rolling out to everyone on iOS this weekend, and will be rolling out to Android soon as well.
Desktop Shorts Rack
Image credit: Screenshot from YouTube.com/CreatorInsider, February 2022.The YouTube channel page on desktop will now have a dedicated section for all creators’ Shorts videos.
This update has the potential to bring more views to Shorts content and bring the channel page on the desktop on par with the mobile experience.
The new Shorts shelf on the desktop is now available to all creators publishing Shorts content.
source: Creator Insider
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