Google Applies Stat Tracking Power To YouTube

Posted by Leslie Poston on March 27th, 2008

Google is well known for its comprehensive Google Analytics stat tracking program. It has now begun to apply its own stat tracking power to its new acquisition, YouTube. Today saw the launch of a stat tracking metric on YouTube videos.

The product, operating separately from Google Analytics, is called YouTube Insight. It is offering a limited, but helpful, view of who is viewing your videos and telling you a bit about your audience. It lacks the punch a full integration with Analytics that transfered to web sites and blogs as well would have, but it is a solid start. it is also the first full stat tracking of this kind being offered by a video host, as far as I can tell (do let me know in comments if you know of any I may have missed).

To see YouTube Insight in action, simply log in to YouTube as you normally would and go to the “My Account” area. Under the “Manage My Videos” section, click on “Videos, Favorites and Playlists”. That calls up all of your uploaded videos into a list.

Beside the video you want to see metrics for, click the “About This video” button. This takes you to the videos page, complete with a link to the video at the top and the metric displayed below. You can change the metric to see views from as little as one day to as much as a year or more. This is a very useful tool. You can see details about your visitors like country or region, and you can track your video's popularity arc, among other things.

there doesn't seem to be a place to track referring URLs or embedded video links. I'd really like to see that kind of integration with the Analytics style stat tracking, since I'd like to know more about who finds my videos popular than just their general geographic area. It's interesting to see how a video's popularity peaks and wanes in waves over time, and being able to match that with better tracking of referring sites would give YouTube an edge over its competition. That edge could only help the company plagued by quality issues and a declining viewer base in the face of sites like Viddler and Vimeo.

you tube insight page