TORONTO - YouTube processes an estimated three billion video views every day and yet a good chunk of its visitors rarely, if ever, go directly to its home page.
Google is hoping to change that.
Google, which runs YouTube, won't disclose how many users only visit the site when they click on a link -- they only say that links are a "very powerful and fundamental traffic driver" -- but the search giant hopes to get more visits straight to YouTube.com with a new redesign, launched Thursday.
Google expects users will always visit YouTube at random intervals through links but it also wants to become more of a regular destination.
The goal is for users to reimagine YouTube as a personalized TV channel that always has a long queue of content ready to play.
"It wasn't the place you return to day after day in order to find new content," admitted product manager Shiva Rajaraman in an interview.
"But what we'd like to do is have users start to use YouTube as a start page."
On the front page, YouTube is now encouraging users to create their own channel by subscribing to see all the videos uploaded by content creators they enjoy. Viral videos and clips linked off social networks can also be added into a channel.
Subscribing is not a new concept on YouTube, but Google is now highlighting the feature more aggressively to drive longer viewing sessions.
The personalized channel strategy is being honed as Google eyes mobile devices and TVs as areas of growth for YouTube. Whether through its own Google TV device, other set-top boxes or with Internet-connected TVs, Google wants users to get hooked watching YouTube on their big screens.
"We're starting with the laptop and desktop experience but we're in parallel looking at mobile, tablets and TV, the biggest screen in the room, and trying out different things there," said Rajaraman, noting that the TV experience is where YouTube's personal channels will especially come in handy.
"You don't want to make a decision every two minutes, you want to lean back and make a decision every 20 minutes ... and you don't necessarily want to just go hunting, you don't want to go to 40 different web pages in order to come together with 10 great videos to watch."
YouTube is also looking to encourage some big-time content creators to consistently churn out videos for users' channels, and pointed to the digital team behind "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" as a good example.
Best-of snippets from the show are posted to YouTube and some -- including a video of Justin Bieber surprising a young fan, now at 38 million views -- have had a long second life online.
"(Kimmel) really engages with the YouTube audience, he's a prolific uploader of various excerpts that stand on their own, and generally he's built a very strong audience," Rajaraman said.
"We've seen a lot of people who have really adapted their presence for TV and have really made it work online."
Canada is one of YouTube's strongest markets, generating the most views per capita of any country. The site says it gets 17.6 million unique Canadian viewers -- about half of Canada's population -- each month.
YouTube also says advertising revenue for Canadian uploaders is up almost 300 per cent over the previous year. Among the Canadian success stories are the Montreal-based guys behind Epic Meal Time, who have built a following of nearly two million followers for their outlandish videos of over-the-top gluttony. Their most popular video has almost 12.3 million views and counting.
