youtube.com — August 2026 traffic, keywords & AI visibility

youtube.com draws an estimated 1.7 billion visits a month from search engines. Effectively all of it is organic — about 1.7 billion visits from unpaid results. Paid search contributes only about 134 visits a month. Spread across 94.8 million ranking keywords, that averages roughly 18 organic visits per keyword. Between July 2025 and June 2026, monthly organic visits went from 2.2 billion to 1.7 billion (-22%). The strongest month was August 2025 at 2.2 billion, and the weakest November 2025 at 1.5 billion. In June 2026 organic visits fell 2% on May 2026. 5 of the 11 month-on-month changes shown were increases. Over the same period its ranking keywords shrank from 95.8 million to 90.1 million. Paid visits peaked in July 2025 at about 826.

In the backlink sample we hold, the most linking sites are hosted in United States (37% of links), followed by Netherlands (20%).

On our AI visibility scale youtube.com earns 76 of 100 points, a grade B. It takes full marks for LLMS.txt. The biggest gap is Crawlability, at 0 of 10 points (robots ✗ · sitemap ✗), worth 10 points if closed. It also loses points on Company profile (19/25), Structured data (0/5) and SEO health (17/20).

The llms.txt on youtube.com runs to 167 lines (7,367 characters) across 12 sections, last generated in May 2026. It introduces the site as "YouTube". It tells AI engines the business works in Video Sharing Platforms, Digital Media, Online Advertising and Content Monetization. It describes 5 products, with prices such as YouTube Premium at $13.99/month, YouTube Music at $10.99/month and YouTube TV at $72.99/month. Services it lists include Video Hosting, Monetization Program, Live Streaming and Analytics Tools. The audience it names is Global creators, viewers, brands, aged 13+ (Worldwide). Technologies it mentions include HTML5, JavaScript, React.js, Google Cloud Platform and VP9/AV1 Video Codecs. The keywords it claims start with "YouTube", "video upload", "streaming" and "creators". It gives the company type as Subsidiary.

# YouTube

## About
YouTube revolutionized how we consume video, starting as a simple upload site in 2005 and exploding into a global phenomenon. Today, it hosts an unmatched library of user-generated and professional content, from DIY hacks to blockbuster trailers and TED talks. Viewers binge on recommendations tailored by smart AI, while creators earn through ads, memberships, and merch. The platform serves hobbyists uploading family clips, influencers building empires, musicians dropping tracks, and news outlets breaking stories live. YouTube Premium removes ads for smoother playback and adds downloads for travel. Music fans get YouTube Music as a Spotify rival with visuals. TV cord-cutters turn to YouTube TV for live channels. Kids stay safe in the dedicated YouTube Kids app. Shorts deliver quick dopamine hits like TikTok. Businesses leverage ads for precise targeting. Community tabs foster direct fan chats. Analytics dashboards reveal what works. Global teams moderate billions of views. Partnerships bring exclusives from stars. Mobile-first design keeps users hooked anywhere. Accessibility features like auto-captions help all. The first video, 'Me at the zoo,' set the tone for casual sharing. Acquisition by Google supercharged its tech. Now, it's woven into daily life, shaping trends and memes worldwide.

**Areas of Work:** Video Sharing Platforms, Digital Media, Online Ad

Google lists youtube.com for about 94.8 million keywords, which together bring an estimated 1.7 billion organic visits a month.

We hold 1,000 backlinks pointing to youtube.com; the 1,000-link sample analysed below comes from 185 different sites. Every sampled link is dofollow, so all of them pass ranking authority. The strongest referring site in the sample is manntheatres.com (authority 1000), with 240 links, hosted in United States. The latest crawl recorded 500 new and 0 lost links.

Derived from a 1.0K-link sample

The latest technical audit of youtube.com scored 74 out of 100 overall. Performance is its weakest area at 37, while accessibility scores highest at 100. The audit makes 10 recommendations in all, and 4 of the 4 listed first are rated high priority or critical.

YouTube's company profile names vimeo.com, tiktok.com, twitch.tv and instagram.com as competitors. Its own llms.txt adds dailymotion.com, rumble.com and bilibili.com. Outside its market, the domains ranked closest to it in our worldwide ranking are googleapis.com, microsoft.com, amazonaws.com and akamai.net.

vimeo.com

tiktok.com

twitch.tv

instagram.com

dailymotion.com

rumble.com

bilibili.com