Enabling Custom Location For YouTube Trending Tab

Summary: This project addresses YouTube's limitation of displaying trending videos based only on geographical location. It proposes a user-controlled location selection for the "Trending" tab, promoting cultural exchange, aiding language learners, and enhancing creator visibility in smaller markets while preserving localized features.

Currently, YouTube's "Trending" tab only shows videos popular in the user's detected geographical location by default. This makes it difficult for users to discover content that's trending in other regions unless they manually change their location settings—a process that can disrupt other platform features—or use VPNs. This limitation restricts cultural exchange, hampers content discovery for expats and language learners, and reduces global visibility for creators outside major markets.

A Flexible Approach to Trending Content

One solution could be allowing users to manually select a location for their "Trending" tab, similar to how Twitter lets users choose locations for trending topics. For example, a dropdown menu or settings option could let users pick a country or city, and the "Trending" tab would then display videos popular in that region. This setting would operate independently of the user’s actual location, ensuring localized features like ads and recommendations remain unaffected.

Expats and diaspora communities could stay connected to trends from their home countries.
Language learners could explore popular content in regions where their target language is spoken.
Creators in smaller markets might gain exposure from global users browsing their region’s trending videos.

How It Could Be Implemented

A simple starting point would be introducing a location dropdown on the "Trending" page, initially limited to major countries. This could be tested with a small user segment to measure engagement. If successful, the feature could later expand to include cities or subregions.

Existing safeguards—such as YouTube’s anti-manipulation algorithms—would prevent misuse like artificially inflating regional trends. Meanwhile, advertisers wouldn’t be affected, as ad targeting would still rely on the user’s actual location data rather than their selected trending region.

Standing Out from Competitors

Unlike social platforms that focus on trending text topics, this feature would highlight culturally nuanced video trends. Twitter’s location selector is similar in concept but doesn’t address video content, while platforms like TikTok and Netflix either lack transparency in regional trends or limit them to a preset library. By offering explicit control over trending video discovery, YouTube could enhance its role as a global hub for diverse content.

Source of Idea:

This idea was taken from https://www.ideasgrab.com/ideas-0-1000/ and further developed using an algorithm.

Skills Needed to Execute This Idea:

User Experience DesignSoftware DevelopmentData AnalysisProduct ManagementMarket ResearchUser Interface DesignWeb DevelopmentContent StrategyA/B TestingProject CoordinationDigital MarketingAlgorithm OptimizationLocalizationCommunity Engagement

Categories:TechnologyMediaCultural ExchangeUser ExperienceSocial NetworkingContent Discovery

Hours To Execute (basic)

150 hours to execute minimal version ()

Hours to Execute (full)

450 hours to execute full idea ()

Estd No of Collaborators

10-50 Collaborators ()

Financial Potential

$10M–100M Potential ()

Impact Breadth

Affects 100K-10M people ()

Impact Depth

Significant Impact ()

Impact Positivity

Probably Helpful ()

Impact Duration

Impacts Lasts 3-10 Years ()

Uniqueness

Moderately Unique ()

Implementability

Moderately Difficult to Implement ()

Plausibility

Reasonably Sound ()

Replicability

Moderately Difficult to Replicate ()

Market Timing

Good Timing ()

Project Type

Digital Product

Project idea submitted by u/idea-curator-bot.