Video Tags

What are video tags on YouTube?

Video tags are descriptive keywords that you add to a video on YouTube to help viewers find your content. They sit in a separate field in YouTube Studio and are one of several pieces of video metadata, alongside the title, thumbnail, and description.

YouTube's official guidance is blunt about their weight: tags play a minimal role in a video's discovery. The one case where they clearly help is when the content of your video is commonly misspelled — for example, a channel name or a term viewers often type incorrectly.

Do tags affect video discovery?

Less than most creators expect. YouTube states that a video's title, thumbnail, and description are more important pieces of metadata — these are what help viewers decide which videos to watch.

That does not make metadata work pointless; it shifts the effort. Time spent on a clear title and an accurate description pays off more than any tag list. Tags are a small piece of YouTube SEO, not its core.

How to add tags in YouTube Studio

For a new upload

1. Sign in to YouTube Studio and click CREATE → Upload video.

2. Select the file you want to upload.

3. In the “Details” section of the upload flow, click MORE OPTIONS and add your tags.

For an already uploaded video

1. In YouTube Studio, open Content in the left menu and select the video.

2. Click SHOW MORE and add your tags.

You can also edit tags on mobile in the YouTube app. The full official instructions are in YouTube Help.

Tags vs hashtags

Tags and hashtags are different tools. Hashtags are keywords preceded by the # symbol that you type directly into the video title or description. They work as clickable links leading to a results page with other videos that share the same hashtag, and up to 3 of the most engaging hashtags appear next to the video title. If a video has more than 60 hashtags, YouTube ignores all of them.

Tags live in a separate YouTube Studio field instead. Keep them there: pasting lists of descriptive tags into the description text is against YouTube's spam, deceptive practices, and scams policies and can get a video removed or penalized.

Common mistakes with tags

• Tag lists in the description. Adding excessive tags to the video description violates YouTube's spam policies — it hurts instead of helping.

• Expecting tags to fix discovery. A weak title or thumbnail cannot be compensated by tags, because YouTube weighs those elements more.

• Confusing tags with hashtags. Only hashtags are clickable and can appear next to the title; the tags field is a separate metadata input.

For a broader look at how search and recommendations work on the platform, see our guide to YouTube SEO in 2026.