YouTube announced a significant transformation of the video discovery experience, deciding to eliminate in the next few weeks the Trending section and the Trending Now list, which until now offered users an overview of the most viral videos on the platform.
YouTube This move comes at a time when the public's consumption habits have significantly diversified, and YouTube aims to focus on expanding its "YouTube Charts", designed to showcase the best-performing content in specific categories.
According to an official statement, the Trending page was launched in 2015 with the aim of providing a clear answer to the question “what’s trending?” “When we first launched the Trending page in 2015, the answer to ‘what’s trending’ was much easier to capture with a single list of viral videos that everyone was talking about,” YouTube explained on the company’s blog. However, now the video giant claims that trends are no longer uniform, but represent a mosaic of micro-trends addressed to diverse communities.
Instead of the Trending section, YouTube is recommending that users rely on personalized recommendations and new YouTube rankings for content exploration. The current rankings allow you to filter the most popular videos in categories such as music, podcasts and movie trailers, and over time new sections dedicated to, for example, education or lifestyle will be added.
In the meantime, gaming enthusiasts can continue to access gaming trends on the Gaming Explore page, where clips of the hottest titles and competitions can be found.
The change comes amid a decline in interest in the Trending page, with traffic being diminished "particularly over the past five years" by the rise of Shorts, search suggestions and rival platforms like TikTok, according to YouTube.
The choice to abandon a single point of reference for trends also reflects the criticisms of the Trending section by creators: many of them argue that the viewing requirements are much higher to appear in Trending, compared to brand accounts that distribute movie trailers or TV clips, suggesting an experience that does not fully reflect users' preferences.
To help creators generate new ideas, YouTube recommends using the Inspiration tab in YouTube Studio, which offers AI-powered content suggestions. This feature, part of the YouTube Creator Toolkit, is designed to help identify topics with viral potential beyond what a simple Trending list would show.
Additionally, YouTube is announcing new ways to support the discovery of emerging creators. One example is the Hype promotion system launched last year, which allows viewers to boost a video’s visibility in a platform-wide ranking. Through these initiatives, YouTube reaffirms its commitment to providing diverse echoes for content creators, adapting to an ever-changing landscape.
The replacement of the Trending page with YouTube rankings thus marks a stage in the platform's maturation: users are encouraged to discover new content through personalized recommendations and specialized rankings, while creators find improved tools to analyze and promote their content. It remains to be seen how the YouTube community will respond to these changes and whether the new system will manage to maintain the level of engagement that Trending offered in the beginning.
