---
title: 'Why Your Videos Don’t Go Viral | YouTube Shorts Swipe Rate'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=N5rpLwsqdvQ'
video_id: 'N5rpLwsqdvQ'
date: 2026-06-15
duration_sec: 0
---

# Why Your Videos Don’t Go Viral | YouTube Shorts Swipe Rate

> Source: [Why Your Videos Don’t Go Viral | YouTube Shorts Swipe Rate](https://youtube.com/watch?v=N5rpLwsqdvQ)

## Summary

The video explains why YouTube Shorts may not get views, focusing on swipe rate as a key metric. The creator shares personal analytics showing a strong correlation between high swipe rate and viral success, arguing swipe rate is more important than retention or likes.

### Key Points

- **Focus on Swipe Rate** [0:00] — Swipe rate is the percentage of viewers who keep watching when a Short appears. A 70%+ swipe rate is good; below 60% hinders virality.
- **Channel Swipe Rate Growth** [1:14] — Creator's channel swipe rate grew from 60% to 80.5% over time, correlating with increased views.
- **High Swipe Rate Example** [1:42] — A video with 98.7% swipe rate got nearly 10 million views, demonstrating strong correlation.
- **Low Swipe Rate Example** [2:12] — A poorly performing video had under 60% swipe rate, low likes, but high retention, indicating swipe rate is more critical.
- **Swipe Rate vs Retention** [3:11] — A viral video had 70% retention but very high swipe rate, proving swipe rate matters more than retention.
- **Threshold for Virality** [3:46] — On creator's channel, no viral video had swipe rate under 65%; below 60% fails to go viral.

### Conclusion

Swipe rate is the most important metric for YouTube Shorts virality. Creators should aim for 70%+ swipe rate and ensure the first few seconds hook viewers to prevent swiping away.

## Transcript

in this video I'm going to explain why
your videos aren't getting any views I
know in my other video I advise that
likes subscribers and retention are the
key metrics that will determine if your
videos will go viral or not but today
I'm going to specifically focus on swipe
rate swipe rate is a very
straightforward metric basically it's
just the percentage of viewers that kept
watching your video when it popped up in
their short speed for example if you
have a swipe rate of 70% that means that
70% of viewers chose to keep watching
your video when it appeared on their
feed yesterday I discovered something
very interesting with my videos
analytics and I thought it would be
worth sharing it with you all I wasn't
even planning to make this video but
after going down a deep Rabbit Hole
yesterday I really want to show you all
what I've discovered I had the
realization that there's an
understanding correlation between a
video swipe rate and the number of views
it gains I've briefly mentioned swipe
rate in this other video where I
mentioned with your swipe rate anything
above 70% is really good but now I'm
going to show you my video swiper rate
analytics to prove just how crucial this
video metric really is you'll need to go
to analytics select content and if you
scroll down you'll be able to see your
Channel's full swipe rate my channel has
a swipe rate of
80.5% meaning that for all of my viewers
80.5% of people have chosen to watch my
shorts when it appears on their feed
when I started my channel my swipe rate
was about 60% and over time it has grown
from 60% to now
80.5% and hopefully it will continue to
increase like I was mentioning before
there is a great correlation between
swipe rate and the video's views for
example you'll see here this video in
particular has a swipe rate of
98.7% meaning that for all the viewers
that had this video on their shorts feed
98.7% of people kept watching and as you
can see the video has performed
extremely well with almost 10 million
views and as we go down the list you'll
notice that most of my videos have a
swipe rate greater than 70% so this just
proves that there is a strong
correlation between the swipe rate and
the number of views the video has gained
I posted this video and it actually
performed really badly for my channel I
was quite confused as to why it
performed so badly because the video was
just like any other video that I've
posted recently and they've all tend to
do really well so I selected reach on
the video's analytics and straight away
I noticed that the swipe rate was very
low compared to my other videos so the
video swipe rate is under 60% which is
not typical for most of my videos they
usually get 70% or greater after the
first few hours of posting this video I
assumed it performed badly because it
had a low likes and subscribers ratio
but after looking at it I could tell
that the likes were pretty substandard
compared to my other videos and the
retention was also extremely high so as
you can see at the beginning of the
video I'm pointing to some text and then
it takes a few seconds for the video to
actually start so this means that people
have started watching the video not
really understood why the video was
created or what it was about and kept
swiping so this video has recently blown
up on my channel and if we look at the
swipe rate it is incredibly High which
makes sense as to why it's blown up and
got so many views so if we look at the
video itself I'll show you the exact
first few seconds as to why it kept
viewers engaged so it's obviously
something that's very engaging and
viewers have kept watching the entire
video it also has a very high like and
subscriber ratio however the retention
is only 70% which is a lot lower than
most of my other viral videos so this
just proves that the swipe rate is
actually more important than retention
itself the most viewed videos have the
highest swipe rate and if we go all the
way down to my lowest viewing videos
this video's only got 162,000 views and
it's got a swipe rate of under 60% so
looking at these video analytics it is
very obvious that the swipe rate
definitely determines whether or not
your video will go viral in this case
any swipe rate below 60% will not go
viral on my channel and to prove this
point none of my viral videos have a
swipe rate under 65% so after looking
through my own video swipe rate I'd be
interested to know if you guys see the
same results when looking at your own
videos analytics do you have any High
performing videos with a swipe rate of
less than 65% and if you have an average
swipe rate across your Channel of
anything less than 70% this may be the
reason why your videos are stuck on zero
views or are not getting any views at
all it seems that YouTube really
prioritizes this metric of swipe rate as
they want viewers to stay engaged and
keep watching as much content as they
can so it makes sense for channels with
high swipe rate get more views as
YouTube want viewers to stay engaged for
as long as possible please comment down
below if you've noticed the same thing
happened with your own channel and tell
me about your own swipe rate I really
hope that you guys have gained a
valuable insight into this video metric
and can improve it going forward on your
own channels if you have any other
questions about metrics or how to get
views make sure to comment down below
thanks for watching