YouTube's Biggest Homepage Change in a Decade: What It Means for Creators

[00:00] have dropped recently, this is why. The platform just made its biggest change in decades, and everyone is panicking. So, in this video, I'm going to break down

[00:13] what this change is, what it means for you guys, and what you can do to pick your views back up again. Now, I recently shared a poll asking you guys if you liked AI content. And when I was reading what you were saying, this is a

[00:26] comment I saw. It said, "Dan, what are your thoughts on the September view drop? Vid IQ and Marcus Jones have been talking about it and a lot of other YouTubers, including me, experienced it, too." And to be honest, like this was

[00:38] the first time I'd heard of this, and I thought to myself, what is this guy actually on about? So, I clicked on Marx's profile and watched his video. And I was like, "Wo, okay." Like, something big is actually happening

[00:53] here. But why is this the first time I was actually hearing about it? Because it's obviously very now apparent that there's been a huge change to the algorithm. And since September of last year, most people on YouTube have seen

[01:06] their views absolutely tank. So I went into my own analytics to check. So if I go in and change the dates from 1st of June 2025 to the 31st of December 2025, which is 6 months, this is what I get. Now, yes, I did have a big spike early

[01:20] back in June where a couple of my videos went viral, but overall, like my views have pretty much stayed the same. Like, there's no big September dip whatsoever here now. Like, I certainly hadn't been affected by it. You can see here there's

[01:32] no big dip at all. So, I thought I'd also ask some of my students in my experienced it either. In fact, my students are still growing. This gaming channel here recently passed 700 subscribers. Sophie passed 500 subs back

[01:47] in December and Emma recently posted video got 42,000 views and got her up to the 4,000 watch hour requirement. So, I haven't been affected by it and nor of my students. And this piques my curiosity even more. I was thinking to

[02:00] myself, was this just sensationalism for these guys to get some cheap views? But surely not because I consider both markers and Vid IQ both my peers like surely they wouldn't create such clickbait on this scale. So, I decided

[02:14] to do my own research and I set up a poll for you guys. And to be fair, the views had dropped in September, too. And one thing that actually did stand out to me, though, was when I was watching Marcus and Vid IQ's videos was the fact

[02:28] that they both said the YouTube homepage had changed. And they're right. It has actually changed in a big big way. Now, normally the guys at YouTube get away with making these small little changes over time so that they go completely

[02:42] unnoticed, but this time the mask has slipped. Now, before I show you what my homepage actually looks like right now, let's actually like zoom out a bit and let's look at a typical homepage, what that looked like back in 2016, which are

[02:55] like the golden years of YouTube where growing a channel was much easier. So if I type into Google YouTube homepage 2016, this is what you'll see here. So homepage back in 2016 on YouTube. And what you can see here, there is six

[03:14] videos on each row. And there's there's five different columns on here with rows of six different videos. So this means every single time you log on to YouTube viewer of 30 different videos to watch. And that means there's 30 different

[03:29] creators and 30 different videos on there. And there's so many different people competing for your attention, which means it's actually easier for you as a creator to have your video posted on there because there's so much space.

[03:41] There's so much like real estate for you to access. And all of these screenshots say the same thing. There's six different videos on all of these rows here. Now, you want to compare this to what YouTube looks like today, like

[03:53] January of 2026. This is what my homepage looks like. So, as you can see here, we've got one, two, three videos and then immediately goes to shorts. So, we've gone from having a page where you've got 30 different videos to choose

[04:08] from to free. This is 10% of what it was back in 2016, 10 years ago. And then below that, you've got shorts. So, a big row of shorts taking up all the space long form. So, three more videos. and then more shorts and then long form and

[04:27] then some more long form down here. So what this means is all of the prime real estate is getting taken up by shorts. Now what the even crazier thing is here if I type in let's say Sony A6700 the results will come up again the vast

[04:42] majority of them are shorts. So all of these shorts here and then you've got one video in search results. So you've l got one creator here getting their video right at the top and then you've got even more shorts. even more shorts

[04:54] buried in here too and a couple of long form videos. Now, this means it's much much harder for your videos to show up on the homepage and search results, like the two very places that have traditionally driven the vast majority

[05:08] of views on YouTube. So, we've gone from competing for like 12 different slots, to just three. And like, here's the obvious truth. All of these shorts you see here have replaced something, and that something is long form video

[05:21] competition. Now, this doesn't mean getting views on long form videos has completely stopped entirely. It just means they're being distributed to far fewer creators. Where views used to be spread across loads of different

[05:33] creators, they're now concentrated on just a handful, which makes competition much much tougher, especially if you don't know what you're doing. But what's actually happened here? Like, what actually explains this big dip and the

[05:46] change of the homepage? Now, at the end of the day, look, this is just another tweak to the algorithm. The most important thing to understand is that the algorithm is always evolving, and the engineers at YouTube are constantly

[05:59] changing it. Now, these changes aren't always perfect. Some of them genuinely suck, and this one definitely does suck for most creators. But YouTube isn't making these decisions in a vacuum. They're reacting to data, and more

[06:12] importantly, to how people in general consume content. Like everyone knows, YouTube is in direct competition with Tik Tok, Instagram, and every other platform fighting for your attention. So if they see people scrolling more or

[06:27] watching shorter content or spending more time in feeds, then YouTube will adapt the platform to suit that, even if it hurts other creators as a result. Now, hopefully this is just one of those changes that YouTube realizes was a

[06:41] mistake and hopefully like eventually reverses. But honestly, I don't think heading in. So, no, YouTube hasn't crashed, but it has changed. And changes

[06:55] like this are exactly why some creators continue to grow, whilst other creators will just get completely wiped out. And this is exactly why I built the YouTube Academy in the first place. So, when YouTube makes these huge changes, the

[07:08] way you create your videos matters even more than ever. Titles, thumbnails, ideas, all of it. Now, inside the YouTube Web Academy, I teach you exactly how to build your channel properly so things like this don't affect you like

[07:20] they've affected everyone else. Now, I'll link it down below. Otherwise, if you were affected and how you're affected and what's changed for you. Thank you very much for watching. I'll see you in the next one. Goodbye.