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Keane from YouTube announced in a YouTube Help thread that they decided to remove the tags from showing up on the video watch page because some are abusing it.
Keane said it wasn't used much by the average user and when used, it was typically abused by being copied from video to video. He wrote:
Tags no longer appear on this page - this isn't a bug, but a change that went out this week. Having them on the watch page, in some cases, gave users an opportunity to abuse tags by copying them from other videos. We also didn't see much usage of tags by the average viewer.
In no way does this mean you should not tag your videos. YouTube will continue to use it for discovery and search purposes. Keane explained:
Though tags don't appear on the video page, anyone who uploads should keep adding them to your videos. Tags are still used to aid the discoverability of your videos like they have before, the only difference now is that they don't appear on the video page.
Forum discussion at YouTube Help.
Comments:
Jorge Cordova
08/20/2012 03:41 pm
Yeah, saw this on Thursday of last week and was wondering what was going on. It was only a matter of time, I always felt that Tags was one of the more spammy things on the internet.
Sunayna Gupta
08/22/2012 09:15 am
Let us see the result of this step taken by Youtube! Trouble mongers on internet gives way to pose new bans and restrictions from time to time.
Jim Rummy
08/24/2012 12:43 am
I wouldn't be surprised if this had something to do with MeganLeeHeart/Speaks/any variation of her name. She is probably the one that made copying the tags a big thing, and can attribute it to atleast 95% of the views that she's ever got I would think. Although a problem now, of course, is that it will be one less trick for unpopular users (who are what YouTube should be about in my opinion) trying to make a name for themselves of YouTube.
LiLi
09/03/2012 12:07 pm
Now I see another problem. Now, users will start putting more tags (many unrelated ones too) 'cause "nobody is seeing it" and then we will have irrelevant video search results.
Jakub Ostapczuk
09/14/2012 05:47 pm
This is sad. This killed the jokes of putting random tags, often making wordings such as "i'm running out of dick sauce". Well, I'm gonna put tags in the description too! Oh, and I did use tags sometimes. Just because "the average viewer" does not use them, others should have the ability to click on them. YouTube.
Justin Lewis
10/11/2012 03:13 pm
Thanks a lot for this share! I figured they wouldn't be devalued, but more so people don't spam.
Earl Decker
12/07/2012 02:06 am
They still abuse it. They insert tags that are popular but have nothing to do with the video. They hijack searches.
Earl Decker
12/07/2012 02:07 am
Exactly! And I'm letting the people who do that know just how much I don't appreciate it, too! Makes me angry!!
Andy
04/30/2013 04:01 pm
If you don't abuse it then you can still see the tags for ANY Youtube video. They just aren't publicly viewable now on the Youtube site. By using the right "relevant" tags for your videos you can drive lots more valid traffic to your videos. I use a free software tool to find the hidden tags of other Youtube videos tha get tons of views. You can download it free here if anyone is interested... http://www.youtubetagslist.com Andy