We all agree that YouTube’s personalized recommendations can greatly improve our viewing experience, but sometimes the “Don’t Recommend Channel” option just doesn’t make sense. It may happen that you click on the option without realizing the consequence. It might also happen that you want to see the videos from the channels which you’ve marked as “Don’t Recommend Channel.” But, don’t worry; you can undo “Don’t Recommend Channel” on YouTube and start seeing the channels again.
In this tutorial, we’ll learn how to undo “Don’t Recommend Channel” on YouTube, why YouTube suggests specific content, and will also take some examples to help you understand the process.
Why is YouTube Suggesting Certain Channels?
YouTube mainly takes suggestions from your YouTube activity like your watch and search history and your feedback. Your feedback could be the option to not show this video or show less of this type of videos. So basically, YouTube learns from the feedback provided and then shows the recommended videos on the YouTube homepage and feed.
When you select “Don’t Recommend Channel” for some particular channel, all the content from this channel won’t be shown in the recommended videos on YouTube, whether it will be the YouTube homepage or the YouTube feed. This feature may come quite useful sometimes when you want to not see a particular type of videos or channels on your YouTube feed, but sometimes it doesn’t.
How Does YouTube Learn from Your Feedback to Show Recommendation?
Whenever you give any feedback like “Not Interested” or “Don’t Recommend Channel” for a specific video or channel, your YouTube recommendations will be updated based on the feedback given. The more feedback will accumulate, the more YouTube will understand your preferences and will show the recommended videos accordingly. It would change your YouTube recommendations shown on the YouTube homepage and in your video recommendations.
Fortunately, these changes aren’t permanent. We can simply undo these actions to show the content on YouTube as well.
Example: Accidentally Clicking “Don’t Recommend Channel”
While you are browsing YouTube and watching videos from a cooking channel and then accidentally clicking on “Don’t Recommend Channel” for this cooking channel, YouTube will now show the recommended videos excluding this cooking channel based on your feedback. If it was one of your favorite channels, then you need to undo the “Don’t Recommend Channel” for this channel.
How to Undo “Don’t Recommend Channel” on YouTube
So let’s learn how you can undo “Don’t Recommend Channel” on YouTube.
1. Go Back to the Channel
If you’ve selected “Don’t Recommend Channel” for a specific channel, then the first step would be to go back to this specific channel to undo the “Don’t Recommend Channel” feedback.
To do so, just search for the channel on YouTube manually from the search bar or by going to the YouTube history. This will simply signal YouTube that you have shown interest for the channel.
2. Clear Your YouTube Watch History
We are already aware that the YouTube recommendation algorithm mainly considers the YouTube activity like the YouTube history as a major influence for the recommendations. So, the second step is to clear the YouTube watch history for a specific channel only.
We can do so by clearing the YouTube watch history or even better by editing the YouTube watch history. Editing YouTube watch history means that if you have given some specific feedback for a certain channel, we can just remove that feedback from the YouTube watch history as well.
This is how you can undo “Don’t Recommend Channel” on YouTube.
- Open YouTube on your account and then click on the left menu bar.
- Then, click on History to locate the videos for this channel.
- Now, just delete that feedback which is associated with the channel.
Reset Feedback for Specific Channels
If you previously provided negative feedback to a channel, such as “Not Interested” or “Don’t Recommend Channel,” you can always change your mind. Here’s how to do that:
- Click on your activity banner to the left of your YouTube account dashboard.
- Click on Manage All Activity under Other Google activity.
- Here, you’ll be able to clear out all the accumulated feedback you’ve received such as search and viewing history.
Resetting Google Activity
Your search and Google activity also influence the recommendations you see on YouTube.
- Click on Google Activity to view your Google Account.
- Click Other Google activity.
- Here, you’ll be able to clear out all the accumulated feedback that have been given by searching or by viewing habits. Clearing out all of this data means that all your recommendations on YouTube will have changed. The channel you may have blocked can also be back on your recommended channels.
How Feedback Affects YouTube’s Suggested Videos
YouTube takes many signals from how you view YouTube. For example, one of those signals is what do you do with the suggested videos. You might click “Don’t Recommend Channel,” and that will impact what YouTube will suggest for you in the future. Your view history also provides signals. Your search history, too, provide a signal.
The more signals you give, such as “Don’t Recommend Channel” multiple times on a given channel, the lesser likely YouTube will show that channel for you in the future.
Example: A Successful Reversal
A travel vlogger might find that I clicked “Don’t Recommend Channel” on their channel. Yet, I find their channel great to watch when they post videos about off-the-beaten destinations.
By following the steps outlined above to undo YouTube’s recommendation feedback, the travel channel can reappear in YouTube recommendations. This gives me back the content I wanted to watch, while still giving the creator the opportunity to reach me with their content.
Comparisons and Channel Management
If you compare YouTube’s recommendation system to, say, TikTok, you might notice that when you click “Not Interested,” TikTok doesn’t seem to respond immediately to your feedback. By contrast, YouTube does respond right away.
You could also say the same for the channels you click on on TikTok. TikTok will immediately start giving you content based on the channel you clicked on, while YouTube requires some effort to do that.
You could also say the same for other video-sharing platforms that do suggestions for content that you want to view. The only difference is that YouTube allows you to clear your watch history as well as give you control over the “Don’t Recommend” channels you want.
Restoring Specific Feedback: Best Practices
When you try to reverse the action “Don’t Recommend Channel,” follow these best practices to ensure it was undone successfully:
- Take time to review your YouTube activity on the website and Google account to make sure you don’t have any other data that might affect your YouTube recommendations (like channels and content that you don’t want to see).
- Review your search and view history for YouTube and Other Google Activity.
- When you provide your feedback, you’re giving YouTube information on what channels and content you want to see.
Conclusion: Managing Channels on YouTube
Undoing the “Don’t Recommend Channel” action may seem complicated, but as long as you follow all the steps above, you can control what recommendations show up on your channel. Make sure that you don’t have watch history, search history, or “Don’t Recommend Channel” feedback that you don’t want.
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