“We really felt like we needed to step back and remove the clutter,” Google product manager Shiva Rajaraman said as he provided an in-depth look at the revamped YouTube home page which was fully rolled on Wednesday. “Changes are based on how people actually use YouTube.”

YouTube engineers said they studied the way people behave at the web site and modified the home page accordingly. The number of links on the page have been cut by more than half.  Information about videos is grouped in one place and one side of the page is devoted to viewing recommendations personalised to what visitors are evidently seeking.

There is a cleaned up “actions bar” for sharing, flagging or embedding videos. Modified playlist tools make it easier to queue up videos for viewing or skip from one to another. YouTube eliminated a five-star ranking system and replaced it with a simple “likes/dislikes” choice. Makers of videos will get spotlights in YouTube comment forums and be able to add brand names to titles of their works.

YouTube has been testing the new page design for about two months. The basic objective is to get people spending more time at YouTube, said Rajaraman. Americans typically spend 15 minutes a day on YouTube compared to about five hours watching television. While the changes don’t include direct revenue-generating features, the more time people spend at YouTube, the more they will see or click on ads that pull in money for Google.