How to Get Verified on YouTube: 2023 Cheat Sheet
Wondering how to get verified on YouTube? This post will walk you through the steps and help you learn more about the coveted YouTube verification badge.
Wondering how to get verified on YouTube? This post will walk you through the steps and help you learn more about the coveted YouTube verification badge.
Once you’ve established your channel and built up a solid following, it’s natural to start thinking about how to get verified on YouTube.
The YouTube verification badge provides your account with the ultimate credibility, showing the world that YouTube has confirmed you are who you say you are. Not everyone can get it. But for those who are eligible, it’s an important YouTube milestone.
Here’s everything you know to get verified.
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YouTube verification actually means two different things. The simplest kind of YouTube verification simply involves verifying your phone number with a code sent to your phone. This ensures you’re a real person and not a bot. This type of YouTube verification is available to anyone and unlocks a few extra YouTube features:
To check whether you have verified your account, go to Settings > Account and click Channel status and features. If your account is verified, you’ll see Enabled in green next to Features that require phone verification.
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But people also say “YouTube verification” or “verify YouTube account” when they mean getting an official YouTube channel verification badge, which looks like a gray check mark or music note.
This verification badge provides credibility. It tells the world that this is the official channel of a creator, artist, brand, or public figure. And, perhaps most importantly, it helps prevent impostors.
Note: To get the simple phone verification mentioned above, which is available to anyone and unlocks extra features, just make sure you’re logged into YouTube and go to YouTube.com/verify.
To get an official YouTube verification badge, follow these steps:
Go to the YouTube channel verification application.
If your channel is eligible to apply for verification, you’ll see the application form. If you’re not yet eligible, you’ll see a message telling you to come back when you’ve reached 100K subscribers.
Note: If you don’t have 100,000 subscribers yet, don’t panic! Scroll down for tips on getting to 100K, and on how to bolster your credibility even without a YouTube verification badge.
Fill out the application form. You’ll need your channel name and ID. If you don’t know your channel ID, you can click the link below the channel ID box in the form to find it.
Source: YouTube
You can also find your channel ID at any time from your YouTube account under Settings > Advanced settings.
Once you’ve completed the form, click Submit.
Now you just have to wait while YouTube verifies your account, which can take up to a couple of weeks. YouTube says, “We’ll check different factors to help verify your identity, such as the age of your channel.”
They might also ask you to provide more information or documentation to prove your legitimacy.
Once you get your coveted badge, here’s what you can do to make sure you don’t lose your verification.
It’s one thing to get verified on YouTube; it’s another thing to stay verified. Even though you’ve met all the criteria and got a verification badge, YouTube can and will take it away if you violate their Terms of Service or Community Guidelines.
If you change your channel name, you’ll lose your badge as well. You can apply for verification again using the new name. But since the whole point of the badge is to confirm you are who you say you are, changing your name regularly is not a good idea.
To get the YouTube channel verification badge, you need to meet the eligibility requirements:
You might see a verification badge on channels with fewer than 100,000 subscribers. This can happen for a couple of reasons.
First, YouTube verification requirements have changed over time, and the channel may have been verified under previous requirements. Or, secondly, YouTube will sometimes proactively verify a channel that is relatively small on YouTube but well-known elsewhere.
The eligibility requirements for the Official Artist Channel music note verification badge are a bit different:
Even if you’re not yet eligible to apply for YouTube verification, you can still take steps to show that your YouTube account is the official one for your brand:
Note that YouTube verification is not required to earn money on YouTube. If you want to gain access to YouTube’s monetization options and Creator support teams, you instead want to apply for the YouTube Partner Program. It has eligibility requirements too, but they’re much easier to reach for creators. You need to:
You can get all the details in our post on how to make money on YouTube.
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