Do Hashtags Ruin Your Chances of Getting Views on YouTube?

After conducting research on YouTube, I thought it would be a good idea to add hashtags for the first time to one of my recent videos. I honestly should have continued my research, because I missed one major thing with hashtags when it comes to YouTube videos. 

Apparently, it's not a good idea to add hashtags to a YouTube video, because there is a chance it could 'kill your chances' of getting views for that video. I'm glad I did experience this, because now I know that adding hashtags to videos is definitely a bad idea. 

The mistake I made was adding over ten hashtags, and some YouTubers online have even claimed that adding even three hashtags can be a bad idea for your video. YouTube can view hashtags as spam, meaning that YouTube won't bother to recommend your video to viewers.

Here is the result of my recent video after adding the hashtags:

I only got 10 views for this video. 

Either the YouTube algorithm didn't work out for the video, or adding the hashtags messed up my chances of getting more views for the video. I decided to remove the hashtags from the video, but as of right now, it has remained the same with 10 views. 

I hope that it was the YouTube algorithm that didn't go well for the video, because if the hashtags played a part for the video now being seen as a 'spam video,' then that lowkey sucks. 

I had so much fun working on that video, it was based on a major mystery of The Lighthouse movie, going over the three possible endings to the movie.

Again, I'm not really an expert on YouTube, but this is what I recently experienced this week with my video.

I think hashtags only work when it comes to YouTube shorts. I've been doing some experimenting with another channel on purpose, to see the results. I have another channel on the side, one where I only stick to posting mini horror stories.

I thought it would be kind of fun to stick to posting the horror mini stories, but on another channel. I want to stick to only long videos on my main channel, while experimenting with YouTube shorts with the other one. So, if you're in the mood for mystery videos, viewers can check out my main channel, or go check out the other channel if you want to watch creepy short stories.

The hashtags I use for the short videos are:

#horror

#horrorstories

#scary 

#youtube 

#youtubeshorts 

#shorts

I either use all of the hashtags for the videos, or I only stick to about four of the hashtags. I'm curious how the algorithm works when it comes to each video, and so far, only one video on the channel has reached about 2,500 views.

I'm curious if maybe it had to do with the hashtags I used, because I feel that using all of the hashtags is a bad idea. Again, I don't want my video to be seen as spam, so I try to stick to as little hashtags as possible. It's surprising how hashtags are beneficial for YouTube shorts, I think I did purposely not use hashtags for one YouTube short one time, and it barely got any views.

This was almost a year ago I think when I did this, so I might do it again to see what the results will be like. Both channels are for fun anyway, so why not test out several experiments for the channels? I'm having a lot of fun learning what works and what doesn't work for YouTube. 

I'm going to continue uploading on both channels, but for sure, I'm no longer going to stick to posting hashtags for the long videos.

I'm determined to at least reach 40 public watch hours for the main channel this month, so I'm definitely going to avoid the hashtags for the next video!

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Thank you for reading!

Emy Quinn