( Note: YouTube removed the way to find out the shadowban status of channels on August 12, 2024. However, the shadowban detection tool continues to provide various statistics about channels. )
Understanding YouTube Shadowban: Causes and Solutions
If you create content on YouTube and notice that your videos are not performing as expected, you might be facing a shadowban. In this article, we will discuss what YouTube shadowban is, how to detect it, how to prevent it, its causes, and solutions. This is an unspoken, silent courtroom—a silent punishment system. Welcome to the interesting and baffling world of shadow ban with the YouTube shadowban detector.
What is YouTube Shadowban?
A shadowban is when a user's content is unknowingly reduced in visibility on the platform. It means your videos do not appear in search results, recommendations, or notifications to your subscribers. YouTube may shadowban content for various reasons, often related to community guidelines and algorithmic updates. Content that has the potential to be offensive, misleading, or harmful can be shadowbanned even if it does not explicitly violate the rules. Your channel is like a living dead tied to dialysis.
Causes of YouTube Shadow Ban
We have many years of experience and research on YouTube. My answers will be confident, but do not expect them to be hard scientific facts. Therefore, please note that I do not publish peer-reviewed scientific papers on YouTube methods. To date, we have examined hundreds of shadow banned channels for you. Here are the commonalities we have found in these channels:
Violation of Community Guidelines
Content that violates YouTube's community guidelines, such as hate speech, violence, fear, misleading misinformation, content intended for children but not suitable for children, excessive use of the word family, violent extremism, or explicit content, can trigger a shadowban.
Spam Behavior
Engaging in spam activities such as excessive commenting, repeated postings, or artificial engagement can lead to a shadowban.
Sexual Content
Videos created solely to satisfy sexual urges without educational or informative value.
Misleading Thumbnails
If your video thumbnails are consistently misleading or inappropriate, YouTube will notice.
Continually Creating Similar Videos
If your video content is similar or you are talking about the same topics over and over again, youtube will notice. Even if your video titles are different, YouTube knows what is being discussed in the video and can read the text on the images.
Shocking, sensational and misleading video content
Making extremely exaggerated, astonishing, shocking but misleading video content, thus creating antipathy. Youtube will take this into account when many users mark your videos as "Not interesting" or "Don't recommemend channel" .
Deleting 3 or More Videos in a Short Time
YouTube's algorithm tracks users. This determines whether your account will be recommended to other users based on their browsing history. Therefore, deleting videos means erasing hard-earned ranking factors and killing the history that influences your subscribers and those users. In a way, it resets you to zero starting level. Additionally, our most-watched videos can be a source of views for other videos. Thus, deleting videos means erasing your source of views. We understand why people want to delete old videos. These are usually:
- Embarrassing personal videos.
- Very old videos with no engagement benefit.
- Dead videos (no views for a long time).
- Uploading a new niche/category.
Even with such reasons, do not delete the videos. If you delete the videos your account will be flagged.. The views and recommendation status on your current and new uploads will decrease. You will also lose ranking and other benefits gained from the deleted videos. Deleting old videos can lead to a possible shadowban on your account, which we have observed.
Uploading copyrighted and world blocked videos
If you upload 1 world blocked video to your channel, YouTube may think you are an amateur and not penalize you, but if you upload a total of 3 world blocked videos to your channel in the last 3 months, your channel will most likely be shadowbanned.
Changing the Channel Name, Country, or Language
If your channel is not authoritative, it will likely undergo a spam control review. YouTube thinks about this as follows (don't ask how I know what they think, because they've been doing it this way for years): YouTube has a professional expert team under the name of fighting spam. These people have been brainstorming for years, and they say:
- What does a spammer do first when they take over a channel?
- What is the spammer's method of operation?
- How can we detect these tricksters? By offloading their strategies to the automation of bots, how can we catch them on the radar with high accuracy?
(In other words, these should be things that real users rarely do, but should have been done in 90% of spammed channels' histories). YouTube, which even records mouse movements, has been able to make decisions comfortably by turning these actions into statistics for years. The spammer is detected through bots and directed to manual review.
Some typical radar examples of what spammers do:
- To gain a high share from CPM and shift impressions, the spammer changes the country and language of the channel 90% of the time. For example, if an American Tv Show (SpongeBob, Family Guy, American Dad, Judge Judy, etc.) is to be uploaded to a channel purchased from Pakistan, Vietnam or Turkey, the spammer changes the channel's country to the USA and the language to English.
- They change the channel's name.
- They will likely change the video category for new uploads. For example, if the old videos on the channel are educational, the spammer selects the Entertainment category for the American series they will upload. When the YouTube Algorithm Bot looks, it sees that even if the above changes are not made, the channel has shifted from the Education category to Entertainment, and this shift rate is 50%.There are suspicious movements in this business, it says either the channel has changed hands (sold) or a spammer has taken over this channel (and it is very right), and it sends it directly for review = Radar. (If they don't send it, they know they will have a hard time dealing with hundreds of thousands of spam channels uploading series, movies, etc.).
For example, let me add one more: not entering your bank account even though your money has accumulated in AdSense and exceeded the payment threshold, not entering your address pin even after the third time, sends your AdSense channel directly to the radar, meaning you need to stay away from things that will take you to review. YouTube doesn't like users who frequently change categories or channel information, it wants a normal, stable person. All these mean a short-term shadow ban, but it can also turn into a long-term problem.
Adsense [or-reh-01] Error
This issue typically arises when adding a Payoneer UK bank account to Adsense. Since October 2022, Adsense has mandated that this error occurs and the related account is reviewed when Payoneer is added. You might wonder why this happened; it’s due to one of the radar situations I mentioned earlier.
YouTube Anti-Spam team led by former CEO Suzan Vojcicki (Rest in peace), noticed that 90% of spammers use a UK Payoneer account to receive payments. So, if you add a UK Payoneer account to the bank account section of Adsense to receive payments, your channel will likely be manually reviewed, which won’t be good for you (this measure is to further tighten the net around spammers).
To avoid a shadow ban, you should refrain from adding a UK Payoneer account to the Adsense bank account section.
Content Changes
Major changes in the type or quality of Content in your videos, and as mentioned earlier, changing the name of the channel or the country of the channel or the language of the videos can trigger a review.
Deleting a Large Number of Video Comments
YouTube does not like the deletion of comments. The YouTube algorithm recognizes all comments, whether positive or negative, and these comments increase the visibility of the video. If you delete any comment, it will harm the video's engagement. Deleting a comment signals to the algorithm that you are not open to criticism or that there is unpleasant misinformation in the video, which can reduce the video's visibility to the point of disappearance. If you report the comment and it is removed by YouTube, the impact on your video is not as damaging as deleting it yourself. Additionally, instead of deleting, try blocking the commenter instead of removing the comment.
Adding a Penalized Account as a Channel Manager
If there is an account that is penalized or violated the community rules among the people who manage the channel, this will affect the channel and Youtube will take this into consideration.
Defective or Penalized AdSense
If you link the AdSense of an old spam channel to your current channel, your channel will suffer. YouTube algorithms are likely to shadowban your channel.
Penalized Different Accounts
If a different account associated with your penalized or inappropriate activity is detected, even if your channel does not violate the rules, the algorithm will penalize you. If you use any Google product on your computer, Google will detect the following criteria for association with a spammy or penalized channel:
- The same phone number used for another account
- The same IP address
- The same computer, operating system, screen resolution (Canvas fingerprinting)
- The same hard disk number
- The same modem
- The same AdSense account used
- Thumbnails with unmodified hashes
- Conflicting cookies
- Browser fingerprinting
- Browsing history and third-party trackers: Websites visited and browsing history
Continuous Complaints About Your Channel
If your channel is constantly being complained about, YouTube will issue a penalty for your channel, one of these penalties may be shadowban.
Incomplete or Incorrect Channel Information
Even if your channel is a well-known popular channel, if you provide incorrect or incomplete information, you may be subject to shadownban:
- Missing channel banner
- Not specifying the channel's country
- Not providing a channel description
- Imitating another channel or celebrity
- Trying to be anonymous
Channels Inactive for a Long Time
Channels that have not been logged into for years, or in other words, channels that have not been accessed for a long time, are subject to a gradual shadowban.
Technical Glitches
Sometimes, shadowbanning can occur due to technical glitches or errors in YouTube's algorithm.
How to Detect YouTube Shadowban?
To check if a channel is shadowbanned, some criteria must be considered. These criteria are:
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Declining View Counts
If you notice a sudden and continuous drop in your video views, this could be a sign of a shadowban.
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Decreased Comments and Engagement
A noticeable decrease in comments, likes, and overall engagement rates.
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Disappearance from Search Results
If your videos do not appear in YouTube search results or appear very low in rankings, you might be experiencing a shadowban.
How to Avoid YouTube Shadowban?
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Follow Community Guidelines
Ensure that all your content complies with YouTube's community guidelines and policies. Avoid posting anything that could be considered offensive or inappropriate.
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Engage with Your Subscribers
Focus on genuine engagement with your account. Avoid using bots or buying likes, comments, or subscribers.
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Monitor Your Activity
Review your recent content and activities to identify any possible violations or suspicious behavior. Remove or edit any content that might be problematic.
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Contact YouTube Support
If you believe you have been unfairly shadowbanned, reach out to YouTube support for help. Provide detailed information and evidence to support your case.
Important Questions and Answers about Shadowban
- How to lift a YouTube shadowban? Explain the situation to YouTube support and request an account review. However, this might not be effective.
- How long does a shadowban last? The duration of a shadowban varies and depends on the severity of the violation and how quickly it is addressed. This period is minimum 3 months.
- How do I know if I am shadowbanned? If you notice a significant drop in view counts, engagement rates, and search visibility, you might be shadowbanned.
- What content increases the risk of a shadowban? Content that is offensive, harmful, or misleading increases the risk of a shadowban.
- Is there a way to remove a shadowban? Yes, by reviewing and correcting violations and contacting YouTube support, you can work towards removing a shadowban.