YouTube has announced the decision to discontinue its iconic “YouTube Trends” page, which has been a popular platform for users to discover popular content for 10 years. Citing changing user habits and the diversification of content on the platform, the company is transitioning to a new system that better reflects “microtrends” and niche content.

Since 2015, the Trends page, which has served categories like “Now,” Music, Games, and Movies, has been an indicator of “what’s popular on YouTube” for millions of users. However, according to YouTube, visits to the page have declined significantly over the past five years.

Why is YouTube Trends becoming history?

YouTube explained the main reason behind this strategic shift in a blog post. According to the company, when the platform was first launched, the answer to the question “what’s trending?” could be a single list of a few viral videos everyone was talking about. However, today, the situation is very different.

The blog post stated, “Today, trends consist of a vast number of videos created by countless fan bases, and more microtrends than ever before are being adopted by diverse communities.” YouTube noted that users are now discovering popular content through a wider variety of means, including homepage recommendations, search results, the Shorts feed, and community interactions. Therefore, it emphasized that a centralized “Trends” page is no longer functional.

The Trends page, which will be phased out over the next few weeks, will be replaced by more specific, category-focused lists. Users will now see dedicated lists like “Trending Music Videos,” “Top Podcasts of the Week,” and “Trending Movie Trailers.” YouTube stated that this new approach will allow it to “showcase a wider range of relevant and popular content” and adapt more naturally to users’ content discovery habits.

This strategic shift is not the first step reflecting YouTube’s philosophy in recent years. The platform discontinued its annual “YouTube Rewind” roundup series in 2021 for a similar reason. At the time, the platform stated that “it is impossible for a single YouTube-generated Rewind to reflect the entire breadth of our creator community.”

Both decisions demonstrate YouTube’s shift away from the “one popular list for everyone” approach and toward a more modern, fragmented structure that prioritizes the dynamics and popularity of different communities.

The company emphasized that personalized video recommendations for users and audience analysis tools for content creators will remain in place.