YouTube recommendations have long been a source of discussion. Some users find them beneficial, while others are not persuaded of their use. M any of these recommendations influence what YouTube users finally watch. YouTube feels that diversifying recommendations is straightforward but adding value to them may be hard. In other words, YouTube can display content from 100 different channels, but you may not find value in all of them or desire to watch all of them.
“We definitely want to diversify recommendations on YouTube. It actually benefits all parties involved, but it’s not easy. We can simply start recommending videos from different channels and accounts, but users don’t want that sort of diversification. They might not find these videos useful. They want recommendations that they are actually interested in,” Cristos Goodrow, Vice President of Engineering at YouTube said.
YouTube adds on its recommendations page that it considers a variety of criteria, including watch and search history. It also consider context, such as your country and time of day, to display you locally relevant news.”
“YouTube recommendations are usually based on what people are watching. We consider click, watch time and several other factors for providing recommendations. However, when we don’t have much information about the user, it is then we provide general recommendations,” Cristos explained.
