The ideal ratio between views, comments and likes for a YouTube channel

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Published on Thursday, 18 May 2017 11:57

Written by Richard Summers

In the last few years YouTube has become a real job for many successful creators rather than just a passion, making Google's dedicated video content platform a very appealing opportunity for many people with an idea in mind, creativity and a bit of entrepreneurial spirit. However, especially at the early stages of a channel, it may be complicated to understand if things are going well and growth is constant.

Therefore, being able to recognize if the ratio between views, comments, likes and subscribers on your channel is perfect is extremely important. This will make easier to understand whether the level of engagement is high or not, if the videos are sufficiently popular and if the Youtube channel is growing constantly and exponentially.

Comments to views ratio: evaluate your audience's engagement

When talking about comments to visualization, the winning equation is COMMENTS: VIEWS = 0.5%. Assuming that your video earned a total of 1000 views, the ideal comments’ ratio that would prove a high level of engagement is 5 comments. Instead, a video that generates 4000 views should have at least 10 comments.
This rule, thanks to its easy applicability, can be used in any situation to check if the ratio between comments and visits is ideal. Obviously, as in all cases, there are exceptions: it’s not uncommon to find videos with 1000 views and a hundred comments. However, this depends on several factors such as the subject of the video: if the video is a very specific topic that attracts a few but very engaged users, the views will be limited to the target audience which will be ready to discuss the subject in the comment section below.

Likes to views ratio: the popularity of the video

A like on a Youtube video is a lot more than just a simple number: in addition to emphasizing quality, creativity and the hidden idea behind the video, it also means popularity. In this case, the perfect ratio between likes and views is LIKES: VIEWS = 4%. In simpler terms, at least 4 like every 100 views.
Visitors, but especially your channel’s subscribers, by investing their time leaving a like will indirectly say that the video is qualitatively valid, from the point of view of entertainment and originality, to the point that it deserves a nice thumb up. If your video does not reach a satisfactory level of likes, the best thing to do is to change the approach instead of being discouraged, and try different ways to improve the quality of your productions until you find the winning solution.
Someone like the famous vlogger PewDiePie found it for sure. In fact he's getting almost a 20% likes/views ratio on this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBBP0hW-ZCM

Likes to dislikes ratio:  approval and disapproval

This is one of the most varying combinations. It shows how big is the approval or the disapproval of a video. The percentage change a lot between old and recent videos as well as between popular and unknown videos. According to the statistics we took anonymously from our wide Youtubers database the typical likes to dislikes ratio is LIKES: DISLIKES = 3%. In other words approximately 4 dislikes every 100 likes when there is an average appreciation. A high dislikes rate can be related to several factors. Often consistency issues like when the content does not match the title. Every case should be analyzed and understood, anyway even if it is negative, is still not related to the engagement. It shows that your video is gaining attention too.
On the contrary there are videos that almost everyone agrees, they just like them. And very few users think differently or have the courage to express their dissent. This is a good example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=juImxVpogRY

Views to subscribers ratio: evaluate the growth of your channel

With great numbers comes great responsibility. That’s how we could summarize the last essential ratio to be refined in order to have a successful channel on Youtube. The more subscribers to your channel, the more videos will need to have an adequate number of views, indicatively VIEWS: SUBSCRIBERS = 14%. In a nutshell, a channel with 1000 subscribers should have at least 140 views per video: one with 100,000 subscribers, at least 12,000.

Numbers in this case may vary depending on the channel type, content, and quantity of videos available: the number of views also depends on the amount of uploaded videos, the upload frequency, and the efforts put by the Youtuber to become well-known.

As we have emphasized many times, these types of rations may vary depending on the type of video you offer, your audience, and the quality of the content you share. However, to keep that in mind when improving and growing your channel is a great way to develop wherever you need to improve your presence on Youtube.