The Netflix Top 10 lists have always been in the news for one reason or the other. Some called them biased, others thought they were a marketing strategy. Repeatedly, the platform has worked to make sure that viewers get the perfect balance of personalization and transparency in the lists. However, they never seemed to hit the right spot. It all comes back to a single factor- how Netflix ranks its Top 10 lists.

What are these lists?

The Netflix Top 10, essentially, are lists of trending shows and movies that many fans seem to love on the platform. The way they are framed, fans believed that the results of Netflix Originals, movies, shows, and documentaries in the section are universal and generalized. Much like everything else on the platform, they aren’t.

Netflix is all about personalization and creating so as to make the user experience better, feature by feature. As many fans expected, the Top 10 lists initially weren’t personalized either. Instead of making a list of top 10 titles that subscribers stream the most, they made sure to add titles from genres users had shown interest in.

To sum it up, the Netflix top 10 lists did indeed comprise trendy shows. However, they were just personalized and chosen from genres fans had already shown an interest in.

Insight on how Netflix ranks the top 10 lists

This time, the platform changed the game entirely. Netflix now ranks its Top 10 lists entirely objectively. There is no personalization anymore. The platform has introduced a separate website that ranks titles every week based on streaming hours.

The Top 10 rows that Netflix brought into the game last year will now finally settle on this one metric- hours viewed per title. Netflix will measure hours viewed over a week, starting from Monday and ending on Sunday, and publish a curated list every Tuesday. There will be 4 Top 10 lists: Films (English and Non-English) and Series (English and Non-English). Additionally, Netflix has also added four of these lists which will feature an “all-time” version instead of weekly updates.

To add more details, the platform has decided to judge every sequel separately. Money Heist 1 and Money Heist 4 will be treated as two distinct entities. Here are examples of the most popular English and non-English films and series on Netflix of all-time:

Netflix launched the website on November 16, 2021. According to you, which method of checking the hours was better?