--- title: '4 Ways to Go Viral On YouTube With the NEW AI Search Update…' source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=-j1ry1TCJU4' video_id: '-j1ry1TCJU4' date: 2026-08-18 duration_sec: 600 channel: 'Romayroh' --- # 4 Ways to Go Viral On YouTube With the NEW AI Search Update… > Source: [4 Ways to Go Viral On YouTube With the NEW AI Search Update…](https://youtube.com/watch?v=-j1ry1TCJU4) ## Summary The video discusses a recent study revealing that AI platforms like ChatGPT, Google's AI Overview, Gemini, Claude, and Perplexity now cite YouTube videos as their top source of information, even surpassing Wikipedia in some topics. The creator explains how this shift presents a new opportunity for small YouTubers to get their content recommended by AI, regardless of their subscriber count or view numbers. The video outlines four key strategies to optimize videos for AI citation. ### Key Points - **AI's Top Source is YouTube** [00:01] — A new study shows that across major AI platforms (ChatGPT, Google AI Overview, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity), YouTube is the number one source of information. AI cites YouTube 200 times more than any other video platform, and in some topics, it even beats Wikipedia. - **AI Ignores Popularity Metrics** [00:45] — 40% of YouTube videos cited by AI had under 1,000 views. Subscriber count, views, likes, and dislike ratio have zero correlation with AI picking a video to cite. This means small creators have a chance to be cited by AI. - **Video Length Matters** [01:24] — Over 94% of AI-cited videos are long-form. The sweet spot is 10-20 minutes, which makes up about a third of all AI-cited videos. Shorts only account for 5%. - **Chapters Boost Citation Likelihood** [03:42] — Only 31% of AI-cited videos have chapters, but 78% of videos with chapters get cited more than once. AI treats each chapter as a mini article, so a video with five chapters is like five different videos for AI. - **Detailed Descriptions are Key** [05:19] — Cited videos average over 500 words in the description. Descriptions should be written for AI, not just viewers, and should include specific names, locations, and concepts mentioned in the video. - **Manual Transcripts Improve Accuracy** [08:21] — YouTube's auto-generated captions are often inaccurate. Creators should manually upload their script using the auto-sync feature in YouTube Studio to ensure the transcript is correct, which helps AI understand the content. ### Conclusion The video concludes that by optimizing video length, adding chapters, writing detailed descriptions, and ensuring accurate transcripts, creators can significantly increase their chances of being cited by AI, opening up a new avenue for growth beyond traditional YouTube algorithms. ## Transcript YouTube, and it has nothing to do with AVD, and has nothing to do with your click-through rate. In fact, it doesn't have anything to do with YouTube itself. And surprisingly, nobody's really talking about it. Have you ever wondered where AI gets its answers from? Like when you ask ChatGPT a question, where new study dropped, and it showed that across ChatGPT, Google's AI overview, Gemini, Claude, Perplexity, the number one source of all of these AIs is now YouTube. Which is crazy. You know, AI cited YouTube 200 times more than any other video platform. But the most insane part is that YouTube in some topics even beat Wikipedia. Now, for you as a creator, why does this matter? Well, that's because 40% of the YouTube videos that AI would cite had under videos that AI would cite had under 1,000 views. Meaning that AI could cite people, and it doesn't care how many subscribers you have, how many views you have, or how many videos posted you have. So, in this video, I'm going to show you how to have AI recommend your YouTube videos. But first, if you don't been running faceless YouTube channels hundreds of millions of views, and I've made over $2 million in just YouTube ad revenue. Anyways, I know you don't really care, so let's just get started with the video. So first, let's talk about what AI is recommending right now. So, according to the research, subscriber count, views, likes and subscriber count, views, likes and dislike ratio had zero correlation with AI picking your video to cite. And 40.83% of the videos that AI cited had less than 1,000 videos when they were picked. There was also a completely different half where some of the videos were up to 3 years old. So, it's not means that AI doesn't care if you're popular. It doesn't care what the status thing it cares about is your video being useful, so it can cite it to other beginner and you have no idea what I'm talking about when I say AI citing your videos, let me show you what that means. Right now, if you Google something, more than half of the time you're going to get something called an AI overview. to the person that's searching. Now at the bottom of each one, Google actually gives the sources of where it got the information for your answer. And yes, a lot of them are YouTube videos. Another example is if you're using ChatGPT or question about how to start a YouTube channel, it's going to do something very similar to Google's AI overview. It's going to give you the answer and then it's going to link a YouTube channel. So if you make videos on a very popular topic that people could, you know, ask AI about or Google, your chances of And the best part is that you can optimize this, right? You can set up your videos and create them in a certain way to have AI recommend it. Now it's very important that I mention that the AI is not the YouTube algorithm. Not but what this means is that if you're a small YouTuber, if you're struggling to get views, if you're struggling to get subscribers, if you're struggling to get exposure, this could be your shot. And again, nobody's talking about this cuz it literally just happened less than 48 hours ago. But okay, let's get started. What does AI want? What do you have to do in order to have AI cite your videos? Well, number one is the length of your video. Over 94% of YouTube videos that were cited by AI were long form videos. YouTube shorts on the other hand, made up only 5%. But the sweet spot and what you want to do is create 10-minute videos to 20-minute videos because 10 to 20-minute long videos made up about a third of all AI cited videos. Now if you make long-form videos already, this should be easy to do. But moving on to number two and that's chapters. Right now, only 31% of YouTube videos that are being cited by AI have chapter markers in their video's description. Now, 31% isn't a crazy amount, but 78% of YouTube videos that had chapters in the description got cited more than once. Meaning, if you have five chapters in your YouTube video, you are 78% more likely to get cited by AI for five different questions. And that's because AI is treating every chapter in a video as its own mini article. So, one of your YouTube videos with five chapters is like five different videos for the AI. So, to make this easier for you, on the screen you're going to see a prompt. Go to give this to Claude, ChatGPT, whatever it is that you use. And at the bottom where it says, "Here is the transcript," you're going to paste the entire transcript of your video. Now, if you have podcasts or you don't have a freestyle when you record, the easiest thing to do is to upload your video to your Google Drive, wait for it to process, and just do the following. You can go ahead and click on it. On the far right, you're going to see a little Gemini icon appear. You're going to click on ask Gemini, and then you're just going to type in, "Give me the subtitles to this video with accurate timestamps." And from here, Gemini is going to give me the full detailed would just copy paste everything it gives me, and again, feed it to Claude, Gemini, or whatever it is that you use. So, you would just grab that and paste it in the description of your video. Moving on to number three, and that is the description of your video. Now, before, descriptions didn't really matter much, but in the era of AI, every single YouTube video that you post from here on out needs to have a very, very detailed description. Now, data showed that cited videos averaged over 500 words in the description. Now, the rule is, and what you want to do, is have the topic of your video in the description, but you separate it section by section. So, every important brand name that you of whoever it is that you're talking about if it's a, you know, public figure, the exact location of a place if you mention it, and if you're talking about a specific concept, you want to mention it by name. Now, remember, mean, nowadays, you're not really writing a description for the viewer, you're writing it for AI. Now, I already went ahead and did this for you. On the prompt. Go ahead and screenshot this as well. Same thing as last time, at the bottom, you're just going to paste the transcript of your video, and it should give you a fully optimized description. You're welcome. if you're enjoying this video, if you find this video helpful, then you might more helpful. And that's because in my school community, you're going to find over 150 video tutorials where I show you my exact blueprint on how I made $2 million with faceless YouTube channels. Not only that, but I also show you cool thumbnails. I show you how to optimize your videos. I show you how to edit videos every single month. And of course, you're going to find way more learn things that you're not going to learn anywhere else. But the best part this is where I speak with you guys directly, answer any questions, review your channels, all that good stuff. I guess you can see why it's one of the school. And just to show you some proof of that, I'm going to show you the wins. Riley here on April 1st posted that he made $30,000 in his first month of monetization. The H year was monetized with just seven videos in 10 days, which is pretty crazy. King Jaden here said, "Never give up." Shared a screenshot where he made over $1,000 in the last 28 days with just 313,000 views. Alejandro shared this screenshot where it shows $3,858 in the last 90 days. Bruno here shared how he made $70,000 in just 3 months of the screenshot. He's actually from Brazil. Scott here, in his first month monetized, he made $5,032. Calvin Yang here made $5,000 in just 7 days with 1.1 million views. And Isaac Oho made $12,000 in just 2 months. He bunch. I could keep going all day, but there is a bunch of wins. There's actually 704 wins posted in the community. Here's wins posted in the community. Here's another quick one by Job Franco, $5,931 with 1.3 million views in just 28 days. If you want to check it out, you can go description or in the pinned comment. And yeah, that's pretty much it. Let's move on with the video. Number four, the final thing you have to do with your videos is focus on the transcript. Now, YouTube auto generates the transcript of your video. Meaning that for viewers, if they click the closed caption, you're going to see your video automatically has subtitles. Now, the bad news is that YouTube's automatic caption maker is terrible. It's really bad. It misspells a lot of things. So, instead of leaving that up to YouTube, you can go and manually add the transcript yourself. So, to do it, picture on the top right, and then you're going to click on YouTube Studio. content, and then you're just going to click on details or the little pencil icon there for whatever video it is that you want to post. Now, from here, you want to go to the left side and click on subtitles. If it's your first time doing it, you're going to see this. Go ahead and select the language of your video, which in this case it's English or actually now it's Spanish, you're going to see these two options. You're going to hover over this little pencil icon. You're going to click where it says add, then you're going to click on auto sync, and you're going to paste the entire script of your video here. Once you do that, you're going to go to the top right and click on publish. Now, that you're pasting is 100% correct, it with the voice and the audio of the video. So, that minimizes the chances of error. So, yeah, that should do it. So, appreciate if you subscribe to the channel, left a like on the video, and to take YouTube serious, the link is going to be in the description and in community. And yeah, that's pretty much it.