YouTube Outlier Checker

What is an outlier score?

An outlier score compares a video with its own channel instead of with the whole of YouTube. A video with 80,000 views is a flop on a channel that usually gets 1 million, and a breakthrough on a channel that usually gets 5,000. Raw view counts hide that; the outlier score shows it.

Returbe computes it as the video's views divided by the channel's median views per video, in the same format. We use the median rather than the average so that one past viral hit doesn't make every other video look weak.

How to read the result

The score tells you how far the video went past the channel's usual reach:

• Under 0.5×: underperformed, the audience didn't click or didn't stay.
• 0.5× to 1.5×: a normal video for this channel.
• 1.5× to 3×: above average, worth a look.
• 3× to 10×: an outlier. The topic, title or thumbnail pulled in viewers who don't usually watch this channel.
• 10× and more: a viral outlier, the kind of idea worth studying and adapting.

Why outliers are the best video ideas

When a video beats its channel's normal by 5 or 10 times, the channel's size isn't the reason: the idea is. That makes outliers the most reliable signal of what an audience wants right now, especially on small channels, where a hit can only come from the topic and the packaging.

Checking one video at a time is a good start. Returbe tracks hundreds of thousands of videos and lists every outlier by niche, format and period, so you can find the ideas before everyone else does.