Describe your video. Get the main phrase viewers would search, close variations and common misspellings, and a few broad tags — counted against YouTube's 500-character limit and ready to paste.
YouTube's own help pages say tags play a minimal role in discovery. They're worth two minutes, not twenty: add the exact phrase, its common variations and misspellings, then spend your effort on the title, thumbnail and first seconds.
Put the phrase a viewer would type to find this specific video first, then close variations. Specific beats broad — a one-word tag like 'food' tells YouTube almost nothing.
food, cooking, recipe, yummy, bread
sourdough without a scale, no scale sourdough, sourdough cup measurements
If people often misspell your topic or a name in it, tags are the right place for those variants — not your title or description.
sourdough
sourdough, sour dough, sourdough bread recipe
Tags unrelated to the video — trending terms, other creators' names — are treated as misleading metadata under YouTube's spam policies and can get a video removed.
sourdough, mrbeast, minecraft, viral
sourdough, beginner bread baking, overnight sourdough
All tags together can use up to 500 characters, and separators count. Fifteen to twenty focused tags is plenty.
40 near-identical tags that hit the limit
15 tags: exact phrase, variations, misspellings, two or three broad ones
Rewrites are illustrative examples, not measured results.
A little. YouTube says tags play a minimal role in discovery and are mainly useful for commonly misspelled topics. The title, thumbnail, description and how viewers respond matter much more.
There's no ideal number — the limit is 500 characters in total. Fifteen to twenty focused tags covers the exact phrase, variations and misspellings.
Yes, no sign-up, with a small hourly limit so it stays free. Tags are written by AI for your video; click any tag to leave it out before copying.
Not on the watch page. They're visible in the page source and to browser extensions, so don't put anything in tags you wouldn't want seen.