How to find YouTube outlier videos: a step-by-step method (with real examples)

An outlier video is a video that gets far more views than its channel usually does. If a channel normally gets 10,000 views and one video gets 150,000, that video is a 15× outlier: something in the topic, the title or the thumbnail worked much better than usual. (Full definition and maths in What is an outlier video?)

This article is about the practical part: how to find them, in your niche, every week.

How rare are outliers?

We looked at 79,796 long-form videos published in the last 90 days by English-language channels tracked by Returbe (October 2026), at least 7 days old:

So if you scroll through a niche and find a 10× video, you're looking at the top 4%. That's the material you want to study.

Method 1: by hand, channel by channel

Free, slow, good to train your eye.

1. List 10 to 20 channels in your niche, ideally a mix of sizes. Small channels matter most (more below).
2. Open the Videos tab and look at the last 20 to 30 uploads (skip videos less than a week old: they haven't finished growing).
3. Find the median: sort the view counts mentally and take the one in the middle. That's the channel's normal.
4. Divide each video's views by that median. Anything at 3× or more is an outlier. Write it down with its title, thumbnail and date.
5. Repeat every week. Outliers in the last 30 days tell you what the audience wants now.

The catch: it takes 5 to 10 minutes per channel, and you only see channels you already know.

Method 2: YouTube search, sorted the right way

Search a topic of your niche, then use Filters → Upload date: This month. Scroll the results and look for small channels with big view counts: a channel with 4,000 subscribers and a 300,000-view video is almost certainly a huge outlier, without even computing the median.

Views ÷ subscribers is a quick proxy. Above 5×, it's worth opening the channel to check.

Method 3: with a tool (the fast way)

Tools compute the median of every channel for you and rank videos by outlier score:

• Returbe Top Videos: every tracked video with its score, filtered by niche, language, format (long/Shorts), date, subscribers and minimum score. Sort by "most recent outliers" to see what broke out this week.
• Free YouTube outlier checker: paste any video or channel link, get the score, no account needed.
• Returbe Chrome extension: the score appears under every video on YouTube (home page, search, suggestions), so outliers jump out while you browse.

Real outliers from small channels (October 2026)

A few long-form videos from English channels under 10,000 subscribers, published in October 2026:

Three different reasons:

• Turkey Leg Hut: a local business story told as a "rise and fall". The company stories sub-niche has one of the best breakout rates in our data (30%).
• Ebola: a news topic explained by an expert at the right moment. Timing is the trigger.
• Clogged arteries: a doctor format with a strong, personal promise ("you can see in the mirror"). Medical explainers keep breaking out on tiny channels.

Which outliers to pay attention to

Not every outlier is useful. Filter them:

• Prefer small channels. A 3× on a 2-million-subscriber channel can come from the audience. A 50× on a 5,000-subscriber channel can only come from the idea.
• Ignore brand and ad videos. Company channels buy views with ads, so their "outliers" are fake. Very high views with almost no likes is the giveaway.
• Look for repetition. One outlier can be luck. Three outliers on the same topic or format, on different channels, is a trend.
• Check the age. A 10× after 3 days and a 10× after 6 months don't mean the same thing.

From outlier to video idea

1. Write the idea in one sentence without the channel's name: "The rise and fall of a famous local restaurant."
2. Separate the parts: topic, angle, title formula, thumbnail. Which one did the heavy lifting?
3. Adapt it to your niche: the rise-and-fall format works for a restaurant, a game studio, a sneaker brand…
4. Check the competition: if ten channels already copied it last week, change the angle.

Want to go further? See how to find small channels growing fast (outliers are what makes them grow) and how to find trending topics on YouTube.

Methodology

• Source: Returbe database, October 2026.
• Rates table: long-form videos (no Shorts) from English-language channels, published 7 to 90 days ago, 79,796 videos with a score.
• Outlier score: views ÷ median views of the channel's recent uploads in the same format.
• Examples: checked by hand; brand channels and videos promoted with ads were excluded.

FAQ