---
title: 'I Studied 5,400 Shorts to CRACK the Algorithm'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=ryZt5pc2O5s'
video_id: 'ryZt5pc2O5s'
date: 2026-06-15
duration_sec: 0
---

# I Studied 5,400 Shorts to CRACK the Algorithm

> Source: [I Studied 5,400 Shorts to CRACK the Algorithm](https://youtube.com/watch?v=ryZt5pc2O5s)

## Summary

A study analyzing over 5,500 YouTube shorts across 34 niches reveals key insights into the algorithm. The video breaks down five major findings, focusing on metrics like average view duration, video length, and viewed vs swiped away (VVSA) to help creators optimize their shorts for virality.

### Key Points

- **Study Overview** [00:00] — Analyzed 5,500+ shorts across 34 niches to decode the algorithm.
- **Credit to Paddy Galley** [00:13] — The study was conducted by Paddy Galley and his team; the video creator did not perform the analysis.
- **Algorithm Basics** [01:27] — YouTube starts with general popular shorts, measures engagement, builds a profile, then explores the niche for the best shorts.
- **Average View Duration Impact** [04:01] — Shorts with higher average view duration (50-60 seconds) averaged 4.1 million views, while lower duration shorts averaged 700,000 views.
- **Optimal Short Length** [06:10] — Shorts between 50-60 seconds performed better than shorter ones (30 seconds or below) due to higher watch time potential.
- **Viewed vs Swiped Away (VVSA)** [08:40] — VVSA measures the percentage of viewers who watch a short vs swipe away. A VVSA below 40% yields under 10,000 views; 70-90% can lead to hundreds of thousands of views.
- **Subscriber Conversion** [11:58] — Long-form videos get 22 subscribers per 10,000 views, while shorts get 17. However, shorts take less time to create.
- **Monetization Comparison** [12:48] — Shorts now earn $0.061 per 1,000 views (up from $0.027), but long-form videos earn $1-2 per 1,000 views.

### Conclusion

To succeed with YouTube shorts, focus on creating longer shorts (50-60 seconds) with high average view duration and a VVSA above 70%. While shorts may not match long-form in subscribers or revenue per view, they offer a faster path to views and can be a valuable part of a content strategy.

## Transcript

I analyzed over 5 500 YouTube shorts
across 34 different niches to try and
decode the algorithm and figure out the
best way to go viral and I want to show
you what I found so here's how it all
happened so the other day I was
scrolling through Twitter
procrastinating as usual and I came
across this tweet from Paddy Galley now
Patty is a YouTube expert who has
generated billions of views with a b and
worked with huge creators including lord
Jimmy and basically Paddy's tweet broke
down a massive study that he and his
partner did to decode the YouTube shorts
algorithm and despite the fact that most
YouTube analytics studies make most
people feel a little bit like an Edward
Munch painting but the findings in this
study are actually so profound that it
got a huge amount of views and even Elon
Musk did A celebratory live stream in
144p just in its honor all jokes aside
though this study is actually a real
thing so today I want to Deep dive and
expand on it so by the end of this video
you will have everything you need to
know to start making viral shorts that
get you you more subscribers make you
more money and get you lots of
girlfriends so a quick note though even
though this video is probably titled or
introd something like I analyze 3.3
Billion YouTube shorts to crack the
algorithm I want to make it very clear
that all the credit and insights for
this study are 100 with Patty and his
team I didn't have anything to do with
it I just needed a clickable YouTube
title so please don't sue me Patty
anyway with that out of the way let's
get into this because this is
fascinating stuff now this study had
five massive findings that will help you
get more views with your shorts but
before we can get into those you need to
actually understand a little bit about
how the YouTube shorts algorithm
actually works and the best way to
understand this is from the perspective
of a viewer so if you're a viewer
opening up YouTube shorts for the first
time ever what YouTube's gonna do
because it has no data on you it's gonna
send you random General popular shorts
that's going to measure which ones you
engage with so which ones you watch
which ones you maybe like and comment on
and it's going to gradually start to
build up a profile on what type of
content you'd like then once it has an
idea of what kind of content you like is
going to explore that Niche for the best
shorts in it and we'll talk more about
what best means in a second and it's
going to try and feed you those shorts
because those shorts are going to be
more likely to keep you on the YouTube
platform for as long as possible binging
your life away which makes YouTube money
so let's say for example whenever
YouTube happens to show you a cricket
show you really engage with that shot
you watch it all the way to the end you
like it you comment on it the algorithm
is going to take notice of that and
eventually it's going to be like hey
let's search our YouTube library for
other videos of Sports and send
them to this person and see if they also
engage with them so you'll find yourself
getting more Cricket shorts you might
get some badminton in there maybe some
baseball you know the real like lowest
of the low but as we mentioned
previously there are probably a lot of
cricket shorts and baseball shorts and
badminton shorts so how is YouTube know
which ones to serve to you so it's going
to find the best shorts in those
categories and give those ones to you
first because those ones are going to be
the most likely to keep you on the
platform and this is where we can start
to get into what best actually means
because if we take a step back from this
example and put ourselves back in the
shoes of the Creator your job is to have
your shorts be perceived by the
algorithm as the best because that means
that your shorts are going to be the
ones that are most likely to be pushed
to viewers first which means you'll get
the Lion's Share of the views
subscribers and all that good stuff but
instead of me just telling you what the
best is I actually want to show you some
data on this so here is a spreadsheet
full of YouTube shorts data from real
YouTube shorts and if some of you are
watching this right now I wonder how you
can get a spreadsheet of die like this
as you come to your channel and you go
to analytics and in analytics you find
that the analytics that you actually
want the data of let's say I just wanted
the overview I come to overview I'd
click see more it's going to open up a
more advanced analytics panel and then
you come up here to this download button
and you can pick which stats you want to
download into a spreadsheet and which
ones you don't by clicking on this plus
button here and then adding say
different columns to your report and
then once you're happy with your report
you can't appear and you click on this
download button it'll export your data
so back to as you're about to see this
data can give us some really interesting
insights so in this shade each one of
these roads is an individual short so
what I'm going to do is come across to
average view duration here which is on
average how long did a viewer watch
particularly short for and what I'm
going to do is I'm going to sort from
z2a which is going to order this sheet
in a way that the shorts with the
highest average view duration are going
to come at the top and then the shorts
the lowest average view duration will be
sorted to the bottom and once we've done
that grab the views here so from here
I'm going to highlight just down this is
a really basic analysis and click down
here and grab the average what you can
see is that on average the top 26 shorts
from this Channel with the highest
average view duration have about 3.2
million views on average now if I change
this and sort this to A to Z this is
going to give us the lowest average view
duration shorts with the lowest one
having just nine seconds and then I do
the exact same thing I grab our top 26
videos and look at the average has
plummeted the average amount number of
views here is now about seven hundred
thousand this channel has some pretty
good shots on it so even it's worst
short to do pretty well but 700 000 is
nowhere near 3.2 million so what this is
telling us is that if you have a higher
average view duration not just see your
short but actually watch it for a long
amount of time YouTube algorithm sees
that as a positive signal that that sure
is a good shot and makes it more likely
that that shot's going to be pushed out
to more viewers I know this is really
basic and obvious stuff but often we're
always looking for the hacks and I think
we need to start on a foundation of what
are the fundamentals that really matter
and clearly seeing the data here the
average view duration is one of those
and Paddy's study also backs this up for
example this is a graph that encompasses
33 different YouTube channels across
different niches and you can see the
averages it looks pretty similar right
with shorts between an average view
duration of 50 and 60 seconds on average
got 4.1 million views think about that
so in essence if your short can maintain
an average view duration of between 50
and 6 60 seconds especially as it scales
chances are on average you're going to
get about 4 million views but that's a
lot easier said than done so how can you
actually do that well our study has some
insights in this as well I want to come
back to this channel here and show you
something else very interesting so if we
sort out views again Z to A which is
going to give us the top viewed shorts
on this channel and if we come across to
the duration of this shot so this is an
average of iteration this is how long
each shot is let's have a look through
some of these numbers so we've got 45
seconds 59 seconds 52 seconds 54 seconds
we keep going down this list we'll see
there's only about three shorts in this
entire list that are in the 30 seconds
or below and even those shorts two of
them are like 37 seconds so they're like
close to 40 seconds anyway however if we
come into views and we sort this the
other way around to the shorts with the
lowest amount of views I want you to
have a look at this column again look at
how these numbers have changed right
we've got a number of shorts in the 30
seconds and below I can just see 10 from
eyeballing this but in general if you
just look over this you can can see that
on average the shorts that performed
worse tend to be shorter no pun intended
than the shorts that are longer and
interestingly this is also backed up by
Paddy's study as well so you can see on
this graph the shorts that Paddy analyze
most of them were between 30 and 40
seconds you can see shorts between 50
and 60 seconds performed far better than
their shorter counterparts now why is
this well again with the caveat that
people are actually watching your shots
because if you just post a long shot no
one watches it then it doesn't matter
but a longer short has the opportunity
to get more of the Thing YouTube cares
about most which you know is high watch
time for that shot if you're posting a
30 second short chances are your most
engaged viewer will probably watch that
short all the way to the end so you'll
get about 30 seconds of watch time now
some really engaged viewers if you're a
little bit sneaky and loop your short
might watch your short one and a half
times maybe even two or three times but
that's the vast minority right on the
other hand if you have a short that's
double the length so not 30 but 60
seconds most of your most engaged
viewers will watch that shot all the way
to the end the difference is is an
Engaged viewer watching your show all
the way to the end on a longer shot
gives you one minute of watch time as
opposed to just 30 seconds so a way to
think about this is that the longer
short has the opportunity to get more
watch time and a higher average view
duration than a shorter shot just
inherently it does due to length now
obviously there are outliers you can see
it in my data for example this shot is
one of the worst performing shorts on
this channel and it is 51 seconds a
reason for that could be as you can see
the average view duration for this short
isn't actually so great but regardless
in general if your content is really
high quality you're going to have better
results if you create a longer short
between 50 and 60 seconds versus a
shorter short but we're just getting
started here because the study found
something really interesting with a stat
you might not have ever heard of called
vvsa AKA viewed versus swiped away
essentially if you go to say one of your
shorts through content and then come
down to the analytics of it by clicking
on say this button and then come across
to the reach tab what you'll see is this
little box box here how many choose to
view which is your vvsa think about it
for those of you who know click-through
rate for long form videos it's basically
like your click-through rate but for
shorts because on shorts most people
don't really click on them they find
them in the shorts feed so one of the
big colors for shorts is not how many
clicks it can get but rather whether or
not people will actually watch it versus
swipe away from it so essentially what
this measures is the percentage of
people who actually watched your short
when they came across it in the feed
versus the people who'd kind of just
landed on it and swiped away from it
because they weren't that interested so
this is a decent metric to look at if
you want to gauge the quality of your
shorts hooks whether or not you're able
to actually really grab someone's
attention the first couple of seconds
because if you can't do that you're not
going to watch the remainder of the
short and they're going to swipe away
and that's obviously bad but let's get
some real numbers on this now if we come
back to our data and we have a look at
this column here which is a viewed
versus swiped away we just get a quick
gauge of it you can see that on average
for these lower performing shots the
viewed versus swiped away is about 70 so
on average 70 of people watch the a
short rather than swiping away from it
and that's decent which explains why
even the lowest performing shorts on
this channel still manage to get a large
amount of Impressions and Views however
if we change this and again we sort by
the highest performing shorts what we
can see is the viewed versus swiped away
stat changes a little bit so now we can
say it's gone up 10 and on average it's
80 and that might not seem like a big
change but when you're competing against
so many shorts and you're trying to be
the Pinnacle you're trying to be the
best in your Niche so you get served
first a 10 difference can be a big
difference and the study found some
interesting insights on this if we have
a look at this graph this is kind of
laying out all the different videos and
shorts that this study analyzed based on
vvsa what you can see down here in this
corner if we move across this line you
can see that if you have a vvsa less
than 40 like chances are your short is
not going to get more than 10 000 views
on the other hand if you're having a
vvsa between 70 and 90 your shorts could
be getting hundreds of thousands of
views as you can see in this kind of
green section here now does just having
a high vvsa guarantee that your shot is
going to get hundreds of thousands of
views not necessarily for example if we
come to the channel you're watching
right now which I'm going to out myself
here but um and we come down to one of
the few shorts that I've posted click on
it we come across to reach you can see
this short has almost 90 percent vvsa
and yet this short only has 10 000 views
so it's not a guarantee that you're
gonna get hundreds of thousands of views
but based on the data we can see I would
still think it's useful to look at this
stat and kind of treat it as a you must
check this box in order to have the
chance to go viral in other words you
can see if you're getting less than 40
vvsa like the chances of you really
blowing up are pretty much nil however
if you're getting more than that that
doesn't guarantee you're gonna blow up
but at least the door is open and
there's a potential assuming you do some
of the things we talk about later in
this video and also the things we talked
about earlier but with all this being
said obviously we can see that the
competition for shorts is getting
tougher and tougher it's no longer the
wild west so a short even worth doing
well if we have a look at more data from
Paddy's study what we can see here the
number of Subs gained per 10 000 views
for YouTube shorts versus long form
videos and what you can see is really
interesting is that audio overall across
all of the channels that Paddy studied
on average long form videos actually got
more subscribers per view than short so
per 10 000 views long form videos got 22
subscribers if a short got 10 000 views
it was only going to get about 17
subscribers however something that might
be important to note here is that on
average it's probably going to take you
a lot more time to create a long form
video than a short so that's kind of
something that you'll want to take into
account looking at these numbers figure
out how long it takes you to create a
YouTube show on average how long it
takes you to create a long-term video on
average and use your own Common Sense
assuming you want to do shorts that is
as to like whether or not it's actually
worthwhile you're doing that assuming
your goal is to get subscribers and what
about making money we've all seen those
videos about how to make ten thousand
dollars a day with YouTube shots and you
actually go and post a YouTube shot for
those of you who are monetized you'll
probably have found that your YouTube
shorts generate more like 10 cents per
day but recently shorts were properly
monetized by YouTube and what we can see
here in Paddy's graphs are the before
and after so before shorts were probably
monetized they were earning on average
per thousand views about 0.27 cents now
however after monetization they only got
0.061 cents which is more than double
the amount they were earning previously
now it's still nowhere near that of a
long form video which is pretty easy for
a long form video to be you know between
one to two dollars per thousand views in
some niches it can be way higher than
that but what we can see is that shorts
are making more money than they once
were chances are hopefully this number
is going to continue to go up again look
at these numbers how much YouTube shorts
make on average per thousand views then
look at on average how much long-form
videos make per thousand views which
again is different on every Niche but
could like as a baseline you could look
you know between one to two dollars per
thousand views and again figure out how
much time it takes you to create shorts
and how many views your shorts get
versus how much time it takes to create
long form videos and how many views they
get and then work out for yourself which
ones are giving you the best test Roi
the return on your time invested and you
can see Paddy also expects that shorts
will start making more money in the next
few months but I highly doubt they will
ever Challenge long-form videos but
still again just work out your numbers
so I hope this information was helpful
for you again padding his team of
Legends here for putting together this
study so big thanks to him but if you
want to learn more our Nitty Gritty
specific techniques and hacks that you
can use to create better shots that will
increase your attention increase your
vvsa and a whole lot more check out the
video on screen where I share 28 YouTube
short attacks that can feel a bit
illegal to know