What does it actually check?

Five things, all read from what the video publishes: title length and casing, whether a 1280×720 thumbnail exists, description length and what sits above the fold, chapter timestamps and their formatting, and tag usage against the 500-character field.

How is the score worked out?

Each check has a fixed weight. Title and description carry 25 points each, thumbnail 20, chapters 20, tags 10. Checks that do not apply, like chapters on a two-minute video, drop out of the total, so nothing costs you points you could never have earned.

Why are tags worth so little?

Because they do very little. YouTube has said tags play a minimal role in discovery, so scoring them heavily would tell you to spend time where it does not pay. They are in the report for completeness, weighted accordingly.

Will a high score make my video do well?

No. This measures packaging, which is the part you control in the description box. It cannot see your retention, your click-through rate, or whether the idea was worth making, and those decide far more. Read a low score as free points left on the table, and nothing more than that.

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YouTube video SEO checker

Score the packaging on any public video: title, thumbnail, description, chapters, and tags.

Checks the packaging on any public video, yours or anyone else’s.

Most of what decides whether a video works happens before the description box: the idea, the hook, whether anyone wanted it. This checks the part that is left, which is the part you can fix in five minutes without reshooting anything.

Five checks, each read from what the video already publishes. Title length, because search cuts it off around sixty characters and the tail is where people put the reason to click. Whether a 1280×720 thumbnail exists at all, since a missing one usually means an auto-picked frame is doing the work. Description length and what sits in the first 150 characters, the slice showing before Show more. Chapter timestamps and whether they follow the rules YouTube enforces silently. And tags, weighted last.

That weighting is deliberate. Tags are worth ten points out of a hundred because that is roughly what they are worth in practice, and a checker that scored them like a ranking factor would send you off to spend an afternoon on the least valuable field on the page. Read a low score as free points left on the table. It says nothing about whether the video was any good, and a high one is no promise it will land.

Frequently asked questions

What does it actually check?: Five things, all read from what the video publishes: title length and casing, whether a 1280×720 thumbnail exists, description length and what sits above the fold, chapter timestamps and their formatting, and tag usage against the 500-character field.
How is the score worked out?: Each check has a fixed weight. Title and description carry 25 points each, thumbnail 20, chapters 20, tags 10. Checks that do not apply, like chapters on a two-minute video, drop out of the total, so nothing costs you points you could never have earned.
Why are tags worth so little?: Because they do very little. YouTube has said tags play a minimal role in discovery, so scoring them heavily would tell you to spend time where it does not pay. They are in the report for completeness, weighted accordingly.
Will a high score make my video do well?: No. This measures packaging, which is the part you control in the description box. It cannot see your retention, your click-through rate, or whether the idea was worth making, and those decide far more. Read a low score as free points left on the table, and nothing more than that.

This tool lives inside Chewbr

Chewbr does packaging checks on every video before it ships, plus the other 46 jobs between filmed and published.

The full app is the finishing system for YouTubers: every video gets a 47-step checklist from Plan to Promote, with tools like this one built into the step where you need them. It has not launched yet, so join the waitlist and you will be first through the door.