Do YouTube tags actually matter anymore?

[RisingAdmin]

I spend like 20 minutes on every video researching and adding tags but I'm starting to wonder if it's even worth it. i've heard conflicting things about whether youtube tags still help with SEO or if the algorithm just ignores them now

Some people say tags are dead and youtube can figure out your content without them. others say you should still use them for search rankings

What's the actual truth here? are you still using tags or have you stopped bothering with them?

[SocialBee]

i literally stopped using tags 6 months ago and saw zero difference in my views or rankings

youtube's speech recognition and AI is good enough now that it knows what your video is about without tags. if you're talking about "how to fix a flat tire" in the video, youtube knows that's what it's about

the only time i could see tags being useful is for super niche topics where the terminology might be confusing. but for 99% of content it's a waste of time

focus on title, thumbnail, and the first 30 seconds of your video. those matter infinitely more than tags

[LenaVlogs]

Tags have way less impact than they used to but i still use them. takes me like 2 minutes to add them so might as well

youtube confirmed a few years ago that tags have minimal impact on discovery. the algorithm can understand your video content from the title, description, video file itself, and even the actual speech in your video

BUT tags can still help with misspellings and specific search queries. like if your video is about "iPhone" you might add "iphone" "i phone" "iPhones" as tags to catch different ways people search

i wouldn't spend 20 minutes on tags though that's way too much time. just add 5-10 relevant tags and call it good. spend that extra time on making better thumbnails instead, that'll have way more impact