YouTube Question HELP! My top video has disappeared from Google search, but it remains high in Bing, Yahoo, and DuckDuckGo. Why is that?

[Acoustic Herring]

Hello all!

Several months ago I made a video on banjo pick accuracy. I followed TubeBuddy's recommendation for how to word it and tag it. The SEO is excellent. It didn't do much at the beginning, but it began to steadily rise and soon was the very top video recommended by Google when searching "Banjo pick accuracy". It sat there for over a month, gaining around 200 views a day.

Two days ago it all changed. The views dropped to almost nothing all day. I average about 10 new subscribers a day and that stopped as well. I did a quick search on Google and couldn't find that video anywhere. I then searched for my other videos on Google and I can't find them either! The crazy thing is that if I search for the same videos in Bing, Yahoo, DuckDuckGo or YouTube itself, they all show up ranked where they have been.

Does anyone have any ideas as to why I'm videos literally disappeared from Google search? Thanks for the help! - Acoustic Herring

 

[SILTHW]

Everything is dynamic. SEO is dynamic.

Think of it this way. Let's say that you have the #1 video out of 10 videos. Then 9 people release videos that have better SEO, are more engaging, have better thumbnails, etc. There would be a pretty good chance that your video is going to now be #9 or #10 out of 10 videos. Now multiply that by the 1000s of people that release videos every day.

 

[Acoustic Herring]

Thanks for the reply SILTHW!

I see your point! SEO is dynamic. If people were making new and better videos on banjo pick accuracy, I can understand my videos dropping in rank. But I haven't seen any new videos replace my own. Mine simply disappeared. What I don't understand is that even TubeBuddy ranks my video at the top. And it isn't just this video. It's my other ones as well. All dropping views at once. My channel has basically disappeared from Google.

 

[Acoustic Herring]

Here are a few other examples top ranking videos disappearing from Google, while remaining at the top in the other search engines.

 

[SILTHW]

I totally understand where this would be frustrating. Without getting to far into the "sausage making", for those sites the intellectual property is their search and ranking algorithm and thus they are different for each company. Because it is IP, no one has the details of how exactly they work. Anyone that tell you different is not being truthful.

Bing and DuckDuckGo tend to be a little less dynamic, but Google is VERY dynamic and seems to change frequently. Through observation, we know that continuing to put out content that iterates your niche will help with Google (not YouTube) rankings. SEO for Google and other search engines in general is different from optimizing for YouTube search, although there is some overlap.

 

[BraveStar]

I totally understand where this would be frustrating. Without getting to far into the "sausage making", for those sites the intellectual property is their search and ranking algorithm and thus they are different for each company. Because it is IP, no one has the details of how exactly they work. Anyone that tell you different is not being truthful.

Bing and DuckDuckGo tend to be a little less dynamic, but Google is VERY dynamic and seems to change frequently. Through observation, we know that continuing to put out content that iterates your niche will help with Google (not YouTube) rankings. SEO for Google and other search engines in general is different from optimizing for YouTube search, although there is some overlap.

I want to assume there's an obvious reason for YouTube to be dynamic in this fashion. Even if we, as YouTubers do every right to get our videos ranked and noticed by the YouTube community, it's not in YouTube's financial interest to keep one video in the top spot forever. Otherwise, they lose opportunities for ads to be displayed on other videos that could bring them more revenue, especially when the number of videos they can run ads on is in the millions daily.

We all want our deserved spots in the ranks, but YouTube cares more about revenue and they will rotate the top spots to ensure they maximize profits regardless how perfect one's SEO, thumbnails, etc might be.

That's what I believe is happening behind the scenes in situations like this.

 

[SILTHW]

I want to assume there's an obvious reason for YouTube to be dynamic in this fashion. Even if we, as YouTubers do every right to get our videos ranked and noticed by the YouTube community, it's not in YouTube's financial interest to keep one video in the top spot forever. Otherwise, they lose opportunities for ads to be displayed on other videos that could bring them more revenue, especially when the number of videos they can run ads on is in the millions daily.

We all want our deserved spots in the ranks, but YouTube cares more about revenue and they will rotate the top spots to ensure they maximize profits regardless how perfect one's SEO, thumbnails, etc might be.

That's what I believe is happening behind the scenes in situations like this.

I wrote a blog post a few years back called "there is no free lunch". Google is not a company doing things for free. That means it is encumbered on the creator to understand how Google/YouTube are funding their free hosting an promotion. In this case it is via advertisements. And it is completely fair in this equation to say that when you, as a creator, are not driving revenue for them, they will turn to putting their effort (and effort costs $$) into things that do drive revenue.

Creators need to stop ignoring this very basic reality. If you want to be treated exactly the same as every other creator on a platform, you need to pay. That's why Vimeo, as an example, charges for anything other than the most basic functionality.