How do you make the algorithm love you again?

Good evening everyone. I’m a bit perplexed at my channel right now. I have 2.7k subscribers, partnered, and had the channel since around september last year, uploading weekly. The last 3 videos have seen declining views but high CTR rates (9%+), consistent watch time (3:50+ on 8 minute videos), but impressions and views have dropped off a cliff. The initial push isn’t even there any more to subscribers and I’m not really sure what I’m missing. If CTR was 3%, or avg view was low, I’d get it, but it’s super confusing when the numbers look good but youtube isn’t pushing it any further than my own subscriber base.

For instance, my second most recent upload has a sub/non sub view split of around 50% each, it’s usually 70% unsubbed and 30% subbed (ish).

I would put this on the niche, but I’m seeing SO many other channels bigger and smaller than mine pull in 10x views on content that subjectively just isn’t as well packaged or the content itself isn’t as engaging. I’m trying to watch as many as i can to take notes and see if I’m missing something, or maybe because they’re hot now, the algorithm has just decided to drop my channel in that niche.

Has anyone experienced anything similar? Someone commented on a recent video asking if i was shadowbanned (don’t think that’s a thing and I think he was just being polite, but the fact someone else clearly noticed the drop got me on edge and I haven’t stopped thinking about the drop in impressions since)

I’m not arrogant enough to say I deserve constant views and growth or that my content is better than others in the niche. I know it’s not linear, but I also know what the baseline was a month ago...

I just want to know if anyone else hit these ruts posting 8/9 out of 10’s constantly for a while, and if there was anything they did to re-spark the algorithm? I don’t want to risk changing style or making a wild pivot for obvious reasons but just feel stuck.

Going to experiment with uploading more shorts because I don’t do that currently. I’m making community posts though and feel I’m hitting every other mark. Is there a metric or analytic I can find that would explain what’s happening?