YouTube’s retirement of its Trending and Trending Now tabs signals a shift toward AI‑powered discovery. Here’s how creators and brands should adapt.
As of July 2025, YouTube has removed the legacy Trending pages and launched genre-specific charts paired with AI-driven Explore feeds. The move favors personalized content discovery—but raises new challenges for brand visibility, trending topics, and creator discovery. Here's what this means for your strategy.
On July 15, 2025, YouTube quietly sunsetted its iconic Trending and Trending Now tabs—marking the end of an era in platform culture.
The rationale: changing user habits, the dominance of Shorts, and the rise of hyper-personalized recommendation engines.
While Trending was once the north star for viral videos (and a common goal for creators and labels alike), its influence has waned as audiences scatter across algorithmically curated feeds. In its place, YouTube has rolled out:
The decision follows a clear logic—discovery has changed.
With TikTok’s For You page and Instagram’s AI-fueled Explore tab now dominating user attention, YouTube’s Trending had become less relevant. According to platform data, personalized feeds and chart-based curation now drive a majority of organic traffic, with engagement rates up by more than 15% versus the static Trending model.
Creators, for their part, had already begun shifting strategies—optimizing for Shorts, playlists, and niche tags rather than chasing a trending slot that increasingly felt out of reach. Brands, too, have learned that global virality is now more likely to come from algorithmic discovery and niche community resonance than from landing on a curated tab.
YouTube’s new Explore experience surfaces content tailored to each user’s interests, location, language, and watch history.
Creators who once relied on trending for wide, sometimes accidental exposure, will now need to ensure their content is findable in the right niche chart or feed. Data from industry trackers suggests that up to 40% of discovery traffic could be lost for creators who don’t optimize their tags, metadata, and video formats for specific genres.
One of the biggest shifts: viral success is less about gaming the trending algorithm and more about understanding your true audience.
YouTube’s charts for verticals like “Tech” or “Beauty” allow smaller creators to stand out within their segment—so long as they label, tag, and structure their uploads for discoverability.
The Shorts feed, already responsible for tens of billions of daily views globally, is now a core entry point for discovery—especially among Gen Z. Playlists, meanwhile, are being surfaced more often in Explore feeds, favoring creators who package content into series or thematic runs.
Track which niche charts or Explore verticals are surfacing your content.
Old metrics like “trending views” or “global rank” are less relevant than watch-through rate, local/regional chart performance, and repeat engagement.
Not everyone is nostalgic for Trending’s disappearance.
YouTube’s move signals a clear direction for all platforms:
Personalization, AI, and vertical discovery are the new normal.
Creators who understand this landscape—who focus on relevance, depth, and niche authority—will outpace those stuck chasing viral jackpots.
Brands, too, will need to adjust:
At Rkive, we see this shift as a generational opportunity for both creators and brands. As recommendation engines drive the future of discovery, automated editing, analytics, and tagging are no longer “nice to have”—they’re critical for visibility.
We’re building tools that make it frictionless to optimize for AI-first discovery, surface content in the right charts, and understand audience segments in real time.
The end of YouTube Trending isn’t the end of mass exposure—but it is the end of chasing generic virality.
Discovery has become more intelligent, more personal, and—if you play it right—more powerful than ever.
The next era of YouTube belongs to those who build for identity, context, and audience depth.
If you’re adapting to these new rules, the upside is enormous: more relevant fans, stronger engagement, and a content footprint that’s futureproofed for the algorithmic age.
Alberto Luengo is the founder and CEO of Rkive AI, a leading expert in AI for content automation and growth. He shares real-world insights on technology, strategy, and the future of the creator economy.