“Chinese Titles Get Clicks, English Titles Get Found” – Lessons from My YouTube Experiments

I'm a native Chinese speaker. While experimenting with posting longer YouTube videos, I found something surprising about how the language of a title affects a video's visibility.

Why I Started This Experiment

I’ve always been curious about how people find videos.

I’m not a full-time YouTuber. I don’t have viral editing skills or a huge following. I just post longer videos I record on my phone or computer, in my spare time. But I started noticing that the language I use in the title has a real impact on who watches.

So I began a small experiment:
Some videos have Chinese titles, some have English titles. The content is mostly longer-form videos—covering various topics like personal observations, tutorials, or thoughts.

What I Observed

Chinese Titles:

Views spike very quickly right after upload
Likely boosted by the algorithm to local (Taiwanese/Chinese-speaking) users
But they die off quickly—after a day or two, traffic drops to nearly zero

English Titles:

Almost no views in the beginning
But they start getting slow, steady views days (or even weeks) later
Some are clearly getting discovered via search, not algorithmic push

This made me ask myself:

“Do I want to go viral once, or be discoverable over time?”

English Isn’t My Native Language—But It Reaches Further

Writing English titles doesn’t feel natural to me.
Sometimes I’m not even sure if I’m using the right words or tone.

But this itself became a learning process.
I started watching how others phrase their titles, and I slowly refined mine.

And then something interesting happened:

I started getting comments from viewers in Brazil, India, the US…
Some videos with zero algorithmic push were still getting search-based views
People even asked follow-up questions in the comments (this rarely happened on Chinese videos)

I’m Still Experimenting

I’m still uploading. Still testing different titles, languages, cover thumbnails, and even video lengths.

This isn’t a “success story.” I don’t have big numbers yet. But I enjoy the process.

If you’re also creating content, playing with languages, or studying how audience behavior changes, maybe this post will be useful—or at least relatable.

I plan to keep documenting this journey. Hopefully with more data, I can share clearer insights later on.

Final Thoughts

This is an ongoing experiment. I have no idea where it will go.

But as long as people are watching—and I’m still learning—I’ll keep posting.