title Factor

Question Mark

Whether the title ends with or contains a question mark.

Questions in titles create a knowledge gap the viewer wants to close — they literally cannot know the answer without watching. This is one of the highest-correlation title features in political YouTube data, even controlling for the underlying framing-type classification.

Regular Videos
+51%
trend only
Shorts
+56%
trend only
Top 10% Video
+52%
trend only

Average Video is the effect on a typical video. Top 10% Video is the effect on the videos that broke out (top decile of views) — so you can see whether a factor helps most videos a little, or pushes the top performers much higher.

When present

The title is or contains a question.

Videos with this factor

When absent

The title is purely declarative or imperative.

Videos without this factor

170K views