Glossary Terms

YouTube

YouTube is Google's video platform and the world's second-largest search engine, with billions of logged-in monthly users and an enormous volume of video uploaded every minute. For marketers and course creators it's both a place to publish and a way to be found, since videos there get surfaced by YouTube's own recommendations and by Google Search, giving organic reach that self-hosted or Vimeo video can't match without paying for it. Its algorithm rewards watch time, thumbnail click-through, and satisfaction signals like likes, comments, and rewatches. The trade-offs for a business are real, though: Google keeps all the viewer data, you can't reliably stop competitor ads from running on your videos on the free plan, and the recommendation engine may send your viewers to a competitor's content right after yours.