Knowledge Bank
3 min read
The idea ranker, and the second score people skip
Viral potential and channel fit are different questions. The gap between them is the thing worth reading.
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Lock the promise is step 1 of the 47, and the honest problem with it is that a promise sounds good in your own head roughly every time. The idea ranker checks it against two different things: what the topic normally does, and what your channel normally does. Those are separate questions and it scores them separately.
Two scores, and the second one is the one people skip
The headline number is viral potential out of 100, worked out from live YouTube searches and Google Trends interest over the last twelve months. It answers whether the topic is moving.
Underneath sits channel fit, scored separately against your own upload history. It answers a different question: whether a video on that topic, made by you, at your current size and upload rate, is likely to do anything.
What you get back
| Reading | What it means |
|---|---|
| Expected range | The typical outcome for this topic, from topic baselines rather than your channel |
| Breakout ceiling | What the format has managed elsewhere when it hits |
| Google interest | Search direction for your region over the last year |
| Your baseline | The median of your recent uploads, which is the bar this has to beat |
| Your likely range | The market range scaled down to your channel as it stands |
The gap between the expected range and your likely range is the useful measurement on the page. It is the size of the distance between the topic's audience and your access to it.
It detects the topic, which is a check in itself
The result names the topic it decided your title was about. Read that line before anything else.
If the topic it detected is not the video you meant to make, your title is not saying what you think it says, and you have learned that before writing a script rather than after publishing. That single line has caught more bad titles than the score has.
Reach versus subs, and how often you upload
Two of the channel readings are about shape rather than size. Reach against subscriber count says whether your videos travel beyond the people already following you. The other one is how often you upload.
Both feed the channel fit score, and both are things you can change without having a better idea. A channel that uploads rarely gets a low fit on everything, and no amount of idea-picking fixes that.
What to do with a weak score
Take the reframe seriously before you take the rejection seriously. A weak result usually comes with a note about aiming at a neighbouring topic that is rising, and moving one step sideways is far cheaper than abandoning a week of thinking.
If the score stays weak after two reframes, the idea is telling you something. Put it in the ideas list rather than the bin, because topic interest moves, and an idea that scores badly in March can score well in September.
Import it when it passes
A ranked idea can be imported straight into a new video, which carries the topic through to the checklist rather than leaving it in a tab you close. That is the point at which it stops being research and starts being a video.
Keep reading
The promise itself is covered in testing a video idea, and the demand check that follows it is two-minute keyword research. Once the idea holds, drafting five titles is the next step.