Tags are keywords a creator adds when uploading a video. Unlike hashtags, they're never shown on the watch page, so seeing the tags on someone else's video takes an extra step.
Tags vs. hashtags
- Tags are added in YouTube Studio and stay hidden from viewers.
- Hashtags are words with a # in the title or description. Viewers see them, and clicking one opens other videos using the same hashtag.
See the tags on your own videos
In YouTube Studio, open Content and click a video. On the Details page, click Show more near the bottom and you'll find the Tags field, where you can also edit them.
See the tags on someone else's video
On a computer, open the video page and press Ctrl+U (Cmd+Option+U on a Mac) to view the page source. Then search with Ctrl+F for keywords. You'll find the tags as a list of quoted words.
It works, but it's tedious: the source is huge, the list is hard to read, and it's almost impossible on a phone. If the creator didn't add tags, the keywords list simply isn't there.
Do tags still matter?
According to YouTube Help, tags play a minimal role in helping viewers find a video. They mainly help when your topic is commonly misspelled or goes by several names. Your title, thumbnail and description matter far more.
Each video can hold up to 500 characters of tags, and the commas between tags count toward that limit.
Tags are still useful for research. They show which keywords a creator was aiming for, how they describe their niche, and which phrases they repeat across videos. Comparing the tags on a handful of popular videos in your topic is a quick way to find phrases worth testing in your own titles and descriptions.
How our Tag Extractor helps
Paste a video or Shorts URL into the Tag Extractor. You'll see:
- The creator's tags, exactly as entered and in the same order.
- Hashtags from the title and description.
- Channel keywords, set once by the creator for the whole channel.
- A 500-character bar showing how much of the limit the video uses.
You can copy all tags at once as a comma-separated list for YouTube Studio, or switch the format to one per line, #hashtags or quoted. Click a tag to leave it out of the copy, or copy tags one at a time.
The limits: we read the tags that are in the public page data, so if a creator added no tags, the result is empty. Private videos can't be looked up.
A quick research routine
- Search YouTube for the topic of your next video and open three to five of the top results.
- Run each one through the Tag Extractor and note the phrases that appear on more than one video.
- Check whether those phrases already appear in your title and description, where they carry far more weight than tags.
- Add a few accurate tags last, especially common misspellings or alternative names for your topic.
Use other creators' tags carefully
Pasting a popular video's tags into your own won't lift your ranking. Tags that don't describe your video can mislead viewers, and misleading metadata goes against YouTube's spam policies. Treat other creators' tags as research, and pick the words that honestly describe your own content.