YouTube has announced that they are now ranking videos based on how much time people spent on watching them.

This replaces the older primary parameter which was based on the number of clicks. The idea is that people spent more time watching higher quality videos while number of clicks can be fabricated easily.

The company has already added analytics data related to time spent on watching videos for the content uploaders.

YouTube said:

The experimental results of this change have proven positive — less clicking, more watching. We expect the amount of time viewers spend watching videos from search and across the site to increase. As with previous optimizations to our discovery features, this should benefit your channel if your videos drive more viewing time across YouTube.