Related Videos Are Overpowered: How to Use YouTube's Most Underrated Feature to Multiply Watch Time

There's a stubborn myth in the YouTube creator community that using the related videos feature — linking one of your Shorts to another — damages retention and hurts the algorithm's perception of your channel.

The logic people use: if a viewer clicks away from your current video to watch a related one, it counts as an early exit, which hurts your retention metrics.

This is wrong. And the reasoning is straightforward.

"There's this big myth that related videos hurt retention and hurt the channel — and it's not true. YouTube wouldn't add a feature if it would hurt the channel. If it hurt a channel, they would remove it."

YouTube isn't going to build, maintain, and promote a feature that makes its own platform worse. Related videos exist because they increase session time — the master metric YouTube optimizes for. If used correctly, they keep viewers watching your content instead of someone else's.

The feature works when the content matches. It fails when it doesn't. That's the entire rule.

"You need to make sure it's related. If you have a video about ranking the best dolphin trick moments and you relate it to how to build a car — it's not going to work."

The viewer clicked on a dolphin ranking because they're interested in dolphins, animals, or ranking content. Sending them to a car-building video breaks the interest thread. They won't click. Or if they do, they'll bounce immediately — and that does hurt metrics.

But linking a dolphin ranking to a whale ranking? Or a dolphin tricks compilation? That's a viewer who's already demonstrated interest in animal content being served more of exactly what they want. The click-through rate will be high, the retention on the next video will be strong, and YouTube sees both videos benefiting from the link.

Same principle for anime content: "If you're doing an anime niche about Haikyuu — a volleyball anime — you want to make sure you relate all the shorts to Haikyuu. If you relate to Pokemon, it's not really going to translate over."

Keep the topic tight. The more specific the match, the better the performance.

Most creators track total views and subscribers. The metric that actually compounds channel growth is AVPV — Average Views Per Viewer. It answers one question: when a new person discovers your channel, how many videos do they watch?

If your AVPV is 1, every new viewer watches one video and leaves. Your channel grows linearly — you need to attract a new viewer for every new view.

If your AVPV is 3, every new viewer watches three videos. Your channel growth is multiplicative. Every new viewer you attract generates 3x the value. Your retention deepens, your session time extends, and YouTube's algorithm sees a channel that holds attention.

Related videos are the primary lever for increasing AVPV. When a viewer finishes one Short and is immediately presented with another related Short from your channel, the friction to continue watching is nearly zero. One click and they've doubled their AVPV contribution.

One creator described building his entire content strategy around this metric: "His call to actions in his videos would be to watch his other videos about this subject. His integration would be 'watch my other video' instead of having an integration to a product."

YouTube segments your audience into three tiers based on how deeply they've engaged with your channel. Understanding these tiers is key to using related videos strategically.

New viewers have watched one video (or zero — they're seeing you for the first time). Casual viewers have watched at least three of your videos. Regular viewers are subscribed and have watched multiple videos over time.

"Your new viewer is someone who has watched your video one time. A casual viewer's watched three times. A regular viewer subscribed and watched it multiple times."

Your growth bottleneck is almost always the new-to-casual conversion. You're attracting new viewers through the algorithm, but if they watch one video and never come back, you're on a treadmill. Related videos are the bridge that converts a new viewer into a casual viewer — and casual viewers are dramatically more valuable to your channel's algorithmic standing.

One creator described a client who had 4 million subscribers but was stuck because his casual and regular viewer percentage was 95% — meaning only 5% of his views came from new viewers. He was maxing out his existing audience and couldn't grow. The fix: optimize Shorts for maximum new viewer reach, then use related videos to convert those new viewers into casual and regular viewers.

The implementation is simple once you have the framework. For every Short you post, link to one related video from your channel. Prioritize linking to your best-performing video in the same topic cluster.

Build topic clusters intentionally. Instead of posting random one-off topics, create batches of 5–10 Shorts about the same subject. Each one links to the others. A viewer who discovers any single video in the cluster has a path to watching all of them.

For channels with both Shorts and long-form: link Shorts to the related long-form video. Shorts act as trailers that drive traffic to longer content with higher ad revenue. The related video feature is the bridge between the two formats.

Don't update related videos retroactively on every new upload. One creator noted that Mr. Beast used to change related videos on all his Shorts every time he posted a new video — but that's unnecessary for most channels. Set your related videos when you publish and move on.

The drop shipping analogy applies: "It's like if someone clicks on your store and they see an ad for a hair salon product and then it's a toy truck — they're not going to want to buy it. It's the same thing with related videos. They need to have intention when they're clicking."