Video tags
Also known as: keywords, tag field
Keywords attached to an upload behind the scenes, which help a platform classify a video and influence discovery far less than they used to.
Updated
What it means
Tags are metadata rather than part of the content. They sit in a field alongside the upload, invisible to a viewer, and they tell the platform what the video is about in terms that it can index.
Their influence has fallen steadily. Platforms now read the title, the description, the audio and the picture itself, which makes a tag list a minor signal rather than the lever it once was.
They differ from a Hashtag in visibility and in purpose. One is a public label that groups posts; the other is a private hint to a classification system.
How it works in practice
Accuracy matters more than volume. A handful of tags that genuinely describe the sport, the location and the discipline do the entire job between them, and a longer list adds nothing at all worth having.
Specific terms reach the people who care. A tag naming a particular Bike park or a particular trick finds an audience that a generic sport name buries underneath everything else.
The first few carry the most weight. Platforms weight tag order, so the three most accurate terms belong at the front rather than wherever they happened to get typed.
What to watch out for
Tagging for reach rather than accuracy backfires. Unrelated popular terms bring viewers who leave immediately, and the resulting Audience retention figures tell the platform the video disappoints.
Copied tag lists achieve nothing. Terms taken from a larger channel describe that channel audience and not this one, and the classification system is not fooled by any of them.
They are a weak substitute for the parts that matter. Nothing in a tag field makes somebody watch, so effort spent here instead of on the Hook is effort spent in entirely the wrong place.
How RawClip handles it
Tags, like titles and descriptions, belong to the upload rather than to the edit, and they are specific to a platform and an audience. What a delivered sequence contributes is a video that holds attention once the classification system has done its part of the work.