How to See What Tags a YouTube Video Is Using (2023)

How to See What Tags a YouTube Video Is Using

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John Locke

John Locke is a SEO consultant from Sacramento, CA. He helps manufacturing businesses rank higher through his web agency, Lockedown SEO.

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If you’re reading this, your company probably has a YouTube channel, and you’re trying to figure out how to make those videos rank higher.

Since YouTube is the second largest search engine (right behind Google), getting every advantage possible can make a difference.

Hopefully, you’ve been renaming your video files from MOV001.mp4 to more descriptive titles like insert-your-keyword-phrase-here.mp4 before you upload them.

Also, you should be optimizing the video title and video description. It also helps to get your videos transcribed, and upload that text file for closed captioning.

I’m sure you are analyzing what your competitors are doing with their YouTube videos. But the one thing you can’t easily see are what tags other people are using on their high ranking YouTube videos.

Tags will help viewers discover your video, and help surface it in search in YouTube. The descriptive tags are hidden from the viewers, but here’s how you can see what tags any YouTube video is using.

Find the Tags of a YouTube Video

1. Go to the video page using Chrome or Firefox.

2. Right-click the page, and select View Source.

3. Hit Ctrl + F and search for keywords in the source code.

4. This should take you to a list of the tags the Creator Studio used on that video.

This list will look like this in the source code:



<meta name="keywords" content="tag one, tag two, tag three, etc">


Another Method for Seeing YouTube Tags

Recently, I discovered the vidIQ Vision Chrome extension.

The vidIQ Vision extention will let you see the channel tags, video tags, and other information about a YouTube video. You need a vidIQ account to activate the extension. You can sign up for a free account, though the Pro and Boost plans will give you some more perks.

Here’s what it looks like when you are watching a video with this extension enabled. The video tags and channel tags for the YouTube video show up above the Suggested Videos column on the right hand side of the page.

Screenshot of YouTube video watch screen with vidIQ Vision extension enabled

So now that you can see your competitor’s YouTube video tags, how do you put that information to good use?

Analyze, Don’t Straight Up Copy

Remember, the idea isn’t to plagiarize your competitor’s title, description, and tags word for word. What you should be looking for is patterns between the top ranking videos for a given search phrase.

If all the top-ranked YouTube videos have specific tags that are used by each of them, it might be a good idea for you to use those in the video you are trying to rank.

P.S. Here’s one more tip: Be sure to use your brand name as a tag in every single video you publish. When people watch a YouTube video, it gives them a column of more suggested videos to watch. By having a unique common tag (your brand name), you improve your odds of having more of your own videos in that column of suggested videos.

How Important are YouTube Tags for the Algorithm?

The YouTube Creators channel says that tags are “not very important” when it comes to surfacing videos on the platform. According to the video below, they say that tags are used mostly for disambiguation, such as when two phrases that are close in spelling or phonetics have two different meanings.

According to the YouTube Creators channel:

“And finally, how important are tags? Well, not very important. Tags are mainly used to help correct for common spelling mistakes. For example, YouTube vs UTube vs You Tube. Remember, YouTube systems are personalized to each viewer and recommend content based on audience interests. They’re also influenced by a video’s performance and engagement, and external factors that influence what people are interested in over time.”

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