YouTube is a highly versatile platform, as it holds different meanings to different sets of people. For viewers, it’s a source of entertainment or a way to learn something new, while for creators, it’s a business or full-time job. And since viewers and creators complement each other and ultimately help YouTube grow more, Google keeps adding new features and improvements to the platform to enhance the experience for both.
The company’s latest effort, however, leans heavily towards serving the creators. YouTube has finally managed to come out with a new feature that will help creators test a key part of the video publishing process in order to learn what works best for them. The new YouTube feature isn’t anything bold, but it can potentially impact pretty much every creator on the platform.
YouTube gives creators a new tool to find the perfect video title
On its YouTube Help page, Google has announced a new feature to allow creators to test and compare video titles using the “Test & compare” feature in Studio. This isn’t something unheard of, as YouTube already allows creators to test video thumbnails and compare how many people clicked on each version. The company is simply implementing the same idea for video titles.
Google hasn’t explained in great detail how it’ll work in the case of video titles, but it should be very similar to how testing thumbnails work. Currently, creators can upload up to three different thumbnails to test which one works best. Similarly, creators will also have the option to add a limited number of titles to a single video and run the test for a few days to finalize the one that performed the best. If you’re a creator, you’ll see the results in YouTube Studio.
When creators run the test, it simply allows YouTube to display different versions of thumbnails to different people. And now that this testing also includes video titles, if you’re a viewer, don’t be surprised if you and your friend see different titles for the same video on YouTube. However, the ability to experiment with video titles is unlikely to have a huge impact right now, because Google is rolling it out only to a “small percentage of creators at first.”
The thumbnail testing capability, which, along with the ability to test video titles, is a long-requested feature that creators have been asking for several years. However, instead of adding both of them at once, Google allowed only thumbnail testing back in 2023. It was in the testing phase for several months before becoming available for all creators in the middle of 2024. It looks like YouTube has adopted a similar style of release for the video title testing feature: first giving access to a few creators and then expanding it over time.
