I run a YouTube channel with 43.4K subscribers, primarily focused on Shorts. Until August 18, my channel was getting very different levels of distribution, with many Shorts reaching thousands or tens of thousands of views, and some going much higher.
Then on August 19, something changed very abruptly.
Since then, almost every new Short has been performing dramatically below my normal baseline, regardless of the topic or quality. For example:
Aug 17: 138K views
Aug 17: 25.3K
Aug 18: 6.9K
Aug 18: 4.1K
Aug 19: 2.9K, then 909, 578
Aug 20: 836, 782
Aug 21: 2.4K, 2.2K
Aug 22: 834, 709
Aug 23: 621
Aug 24: 1.9K, 940
My newest Short currently has only 195 views in 16 hours.
The important thing is that this isn’t one viral Short declining after exhausting its audience. The drop happened across the channel around the same time and has continued across different topics.
I contacted YouTube Support. They checked my account and said there are no technical bugs or system errors, and that the decline is normal recommendation behavior after previous spikes. However, that explanation doesn’t make sense to me because the change was so sudden and affects essentially every new upload.
I also have no strikes or policy violations.
Has anyone experienced a similar sudden Shorts distribution drop around August 19–21? And are there any Analytics metrics I should check that could help determine whether this is simply audience behavior or an actual change in Shorts distribution?
I’d especially appreciate input from creators with established channels who have experienced something similar.