You mean your Geocities homepage which got a fabulous 121 hits in 1997? ;)
I'd take that bet. There's a lot the agorithm does, but there's also a lot of companies and people sharing links to the videos. Any new movie trailer or album drop would definitely be linked from twitter or some company homepage. And I wager those are what make up the most views.
But I wouldn't be surprised to be right or wrong on this. the recommendations certainly aren't a tiny portion.