Discover exactly what topics resonate most with your audience — both now and over time. Identify rising trends in your niche, see which competitors dominate specific topics and formats, and track how that changes across key metrics. Dive into top-performing content to understand what drives success and uncover fresh ideas to inspire your next video.
Where is it located?
- The Niche Topic Analysis feature can in our main menu, YouTube home page, any channel page, or any video page under the Niche Topic Analysis tab in the Toolbox. The Toolbox appears as a tab on the right side of the screen. If it’s your first time using this tool, look for a pulse on the TubeBuddy logo on the tab on the right-hand side of the screen.
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Additionally, you can find links to Niche Topic Analysis in the TB YT Studio Toolbox:
Setting up my Niche
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Do I need to set up a niche to use Niche Topic Analysis?
- Yes, Niche Topic Analysis uses AI models to analyze the channels (and their videos) you’ve added to your niche for the Channel and Niche Insights tools.
- Yes, Niche Topic Analysis uses AI models to analyze the channels (and their videos) you’ve added to your niche for the Channel and Niche Insights tools.
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Why is it helpful to add channels to a niche?
- The more channels in your niche that you track (i.e., add to your niche), the better our analysis will be about how your niche is growing relative to channels you are researching and relative to your performance. The Niche Topic Analysis tool helps you look at which topics resonate with your audience, based on your competitor’s performance with those topics.
- When getting started, we recommend adding channels based on those you’ve already subscribed to on YouTube. This helps you begin building your niche more easily and effectively right from the start.
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Do I need to have 6 channels to use Niche Topic Analysis?
- No. We recommend adding six or more for a more robust analysis of topics in your niche, but you can get strong results about which topics resonate with your audience with less than 6 channels in your niche.
- No. We recommend adding six or more for a more robust analysis of topics in your niche, but you can get strong results about which topics resonate with your audience with less than 6 channels in your niche.
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Where are the recommended channels sourced from?
- They’re sourced from your YouTube Subscriptions list at this time. In the future, we will look to add other sources to improve the quality of the recommendations we make for your niche.
- They’re sourced from your YouTube Subscriptions list at this time. In the future, we will look to add other sources to improve the quality of the recommendations we make for your niche.
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Is there a limit to the number of people I can add to Niche?
- Yes, 50 channels.
How Niche Topic Analysis Works
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What is the difference between List View and Heatmap views of topics?
- The Niche Topic List View allows you to quickly identify which topics in your niche are of most interest to your audience. The topics are sorted from those that are most successful for certain metric, like the % of views the topic owns within your niche (a.k.a. View Share), to the least successful topics.
- The Niche Topic Heatmap View allows you to compare which topics in your niche your competitors are most successful with relative to your audience. You can compare how you perform for each topic, and quickly see which competitors outperform you and underperform you for each topic through the color-coded heatmap.
- The Niche Topic List View allows you to quickly identify which topics in your niche are of most interest to your audience. The topics are sorted from those that are most successful for certain metric, like the % of views the topic owns within your niche (a.k.a. View Share), to the least successful topics.
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How do I use Content Explorer?
- The Topic Content Explorer allows you to look at each piece of content inside of a topic that your competitors have published. The content is sorted from most successful for a certain metric to least successful, and is grouped by format (Long-form, Shorts, Lives & Premiers).
- You can use Topic Content Explorer to examine the thumbnails, titles, and formats that resonate for a topic. As you review the content, you can also determine what doesn’t resonate and what to avoid.
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Does it have short-form or livestream videos in its metrics or features? What are the filter and sort tools I can use in my topic research with this tool?
- Yes. You can filter topics in your niche by format (long form, shorts, livestream + premieres) as well as by date period. You can also sort by view, content count, and outlier metrics. Using these sorting and filtering tools is a powerful way to see what is resonating with your audience in your niche.
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Should I expect the data to be a live count of their YT metrics, or will there be a delay?
- There is some variance depending on whether or not TubeBuddy is familiar with the channel you’re looking at. For channels in your niche, or channels you are evaluating to add to your niche, we aim to get the most recently available data.
- Additionally, you can rebuild or refresh the data of topics within Niche Topic Analysis at any time:
- Rebuild: Regroups the content in your niche from scratch, and identifies topics based on those new groups.
- Refresh: Updates the existing topics in Niche Topic Analysis with fresh data.
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How many levels of topics can I drill down into?
- There are three levels of topics that you can drill into. The top parent level is the most general group of topics in your niche. The lowest child level is the most specific group of topics for a set of parent topics. For example, if you have a niche on rare books, you might see a topical hierarchy like this:
- Rare Books & Collectibles (top parent, Level 1)
- Book Collecting Markets (Level 2)
- Books and Their Histories (Level 2)
- Book Conservation Events (Level 2)
- Book Collection Insights (Level 3)
- Literary Presentations (Level 3)
- Rare Books & Collectibles (top parent, Level 1)
- Each level also has an “Other” grouping, which allows you to explore content that didn’t quite fit any of the groupings that our AI created.
- There are three levels of topics that you can drill into. The top parent level is the most general group of topics in your niche. The lowest child level is the most specific group of topics for a set of parent topics. For example, if you have a niche on rare books, you might see a topical hierarchy like this:
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Why am I not seeing the full list of content I’d expect to see inside of a topic?
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First, make sure to click the expansion links to see all videos within a section
- If you’re still not seeing content you’d expect in a topic, it could be that the AI:
- Grouped it in an adjacent topic
- Couldn’t group the video, and it was put under the “Other” topic
- The video may not have been tracked in our tracking system
- The content is, for some reason, unavailable (for example, it was delisted).
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How do I leave feedback about a topic?
- Yes, we include simple thumbs-up, thumbs-down feedback buttons next to each topic in List View. Use these to let us know if a topic is right or wrong for your niche, and we’ll work to improve the quality of topics and how personalized they are for you based on your feedback.
- Yes, we include simple thumbs-up, thumbs-down feedback buttons next to each topic in List View. Use these to let us know if a topic is right or wrong for your niche, and we’ll work to improve the quality of topics and how personalized they are for you based on your feedback.
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How do I leave feedback about a video that is associated with a topic?
- At this time, we don’t have a simple feedback system for the videos inside of a topic, however this functionality is on our future roadmap.
- At this time, we don’t have a simple feedback system for the videos inside of a topic, however this functionality is on our future roadmap.
- Where can I leave feedback about this tool for the Product and User Experience team?