source: http://searchengineland.com/youtube-search-adds-time-watched-as-ranking-factor-136412
YouTube has adjusted their ranking algorithm to include the actual amount of time consumers spend watching a video. Google's YouTube is stating that it is more important how much of a video was actually consumed vs the number of times people have clicked on a video. Simply put, quality trumps quantity.
I wonder if & how this algorithmic change would actually impact the YouTube clips that have gone viral over the past few years? Certainly, people have a tendency to click on videos that are shared by their friends/family, but only those who are truly interested in the video would then watch the video in its entirety and then decide to re-share the video with his or her friends/family (and the same would go for a re-share recipient's decision to watch/re-share, etc).
To me, it appears that there already is a self-policing quality control in place by the sheer nature of how virality works (as just described). If you look at the example in the source article, it obviously looks like a way for Google to promote itself over Apple. I wonder to what extent this algorithmic change could then simply be a way to for Google to get itself to pop to the top on YouTube search results (i.e. a self-serving marketing strategy), more than anything else?
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