VideoCore how-to · 3 · Research

Outlier Playbook and Score Topics: measure first, then score

The Outlier Playbook pulls the real top performers for a niche or your competitors straight from YouTube and scores one channel's uploads against its own baseline. Score Topics rates a list of topics across seven dimensions so you only make what scores well.

3 steps · about 1 min · screens captured 16 Oct 2026
1

Real Top Performers

Niche keyword or competitor channels, then Find Real Top Performers: view counts from YouTube, outlier scores calculated by VideoCore. Map the whole niche crawls deeper while the page is open; Map adjacent niches looks one field over. A niche scan costs a little daily quota.

Real Top Performers
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Channel Outlier Scan

Below: one channel's recent uploads against its own rolling baseline, the same maths as the Lens badges, then a reading of why the breakouts worked. Real view counts, measured multipliers.

Channel Outlier Scan
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Score Topics

Give it a list of topics, or Score from Last Scan. Each gets a composite out of 100 across demand, competition, channel fit, monetisation and more, with the verdict chips: YES or ABSORB, evergreen, the channel-fit score. Filter by minimum score and status. Convert the good ones to briefs.

Score Topics
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Why it works this way

A topic is scored against your own channel's fit and the field's competition, from measured data, so the score changes when the field does and you can see which dimension moved it.

The full method →

Open the Outlier Playbook →

Next: What's Working: the patterns in your field