Is it possible to find the source of video views prior to 48hr analytics update?

[evoloz]

Bit of a strange one but basically an older video (from about 4 months ago) suddenly started getting a large amount of views, although I have no clue why? I guessed someone had shared it somewhere but I have been unable to find it.

I was just wondering if there is a way to check the traffic source without having to wait the 48hrs for it to go from real time views into the full analytics?

 

[Crown]

Bit of a strange one but basically an older video (from about 4 months ago) suddenly started getting a large amount of views, although I have no clue why? I guessed someone had shared it somewhere but I have been unable to find it.

I was just wondering if there is a way to check the traffic source without having to wait the 48hrs for it to go from real time views into the full analytics?

That's interesting. I'm in a similar situation. A video from several years ago suddenly spiked yesterday (Monday 9am European time) and is still going strong. The fact that you've experienced the same thing means it's probably too much of a coincidence it's come from a social media share. Fingers crossed the spike is coming from the algorithm (suggested videos) because that has more chance of lasting a longer time. (Social media shares tend to die off quite quickly)

For the stats - I think the answer is no unfortunately. We'll have to wait for the stats to update in order to see the traffic sources. What time and timezone did the spike start?

 

[evoloz]

That's interesting. I'm in a similar situation. A video from several years ago suddenly spiked yesterday (Monday 9am European time) and is still going strong. The fact that you've experienced the same thing means it's probably too much of a coincidence it's come from a social media share. Fingers crossed the spike is coming from the algorithm (suggested videos) because that has more chance of lasting a longer time. (Social media shares tend to die off quite quickly)

For the stats - I think the answer is no unfortunately. We'll have to wait for the stats to update in order to see the traffic sources. What time and timezone did the spike start?

Thats very interesting, I did wonder if it could be a suggested video but I decided it seemed unlikely since all of the views were from Czech Rep or Slovakia (the video is a game set in 18th Century Bohemia, modern day czech) so not all that surprising but if it was a suggested video i'd have thought it would involve a lot more countries.

 

[Crown]

Thats very interesting, I did wonder if it could be a suggested video but I decided it seemed unlikely since all of the views were from Czech Rep or Slovakia (the video is a game set in 18th Century Bohemia, modern day czech) so not all that surprising but if it was a suggested video i'd have thought it would involve a lot more countries.

What time did the spike start?

 

[evoloz]

It shows as 5-6pm on 5th[DOUBLEPOST=1517918630,1517918444][/DOUBLEPOST]Spike even seems to react as timezone dependant (ie. everyone went to sleep overnight eu time and so views stopped) Pic attached

By no means massive views but for a video that normally gets 1 to 2 views a week its certainly odd

 

[Hirudov]

Bit of a strange one but basically an older video (from about 4 months ago) suddenly started getting a large amount of views, although I have no clue why? I guessed someone had shared it somewhere but I have been unable to find it.

I was just wondering if there is a way to check the traffic source without having to wait the 48hrs for it to go from real time views into the full analytics?

You can see if your video is shared (embedded) on a website by searching for it on Google and filtering results to the past 24h or past week. This way I find when my videos are shared on forums and they spike in views. For more details you have to wait for the analytics update.

 

[Crown]

Thats very interesting, I did wonder if it could be a suggested video but I decided it seemed unlikely since all of the views were from Czech Rep or Slovakia (the video is a game set in 18th Century Bohemia, modern day czech) so not all that surprising but if it was a suggested video i'd have thought it would involve a lot more countries.

It shows as 5-6pm on 5th[DOUBLEPOST=1517918630,1517918444][/DOUBLEPOST]Spike even seems to react as timezone dependant (ie. everyone went to sleep overnight eu time and so views stopped) Pic attached

By no means massive views but for a video that normally gets 1 to 2 views a week its certainly odd

For me - The higher than usual activity started at 9 am (Europe) but yeah it peaked at 6 pm.

The video in question is one that typically only usually pulls in 150 views per day but as you can see, it's going to hit 4000 in the last 48 hours although it does seem to be slowing down.


I checked geography and it's interesting. The majority of my views have come from France and then Belgium and a few other French speaking countries. It could be our 2 cases are totally unrelated and maybe my video was shared on a French speaking forum or maybe even a media website and yours on a Czech forum. It just seems to be too much of a coincidence though.....

If it's the algorithm - It appears as though it is able to filter by language / geography. I believe the "trending" page is by region so that's my theory atm. Something has definitely changed in the algo IMHO - Maybe the criteria for the regional trending pages has been tweaked.

 

[evoloz]

This is very interesting. I agree that it seems unlikely to be a coincidence + I have done a fairly good search around for any sign on my video being posted but nothing yet. Its on a larger scale but your views curve is almost identical to mine as well.

On top of that the fact both of the views seem to be coming from regionally targeted areas it almost certainly has to be the algorithm, which is absolutely awesome i'd much rather get picked up by youtube itself rather than be posted on a forum!

Hopefully, its now slowing down as we head into the working day and it'll pick back up again this evening.

This is really why i absolutely love youtube, you just never really know whats around the corner or what weird things going to happen next

 

[Alexander Hoff]

You can use the yt studio app actually. It shows the sources during the last 48 hours and even the last 60 minutes. However, there's been an issue with it for the last couple of days and it doesn't work right now. Well, for me anyways. Maybe I just need to update my phone or something lol.

 

[Crown]

This is very interesting. I agree that it seems unlikely to be a coincidence + I have done a fairly good search around for any sign on my video being posted but nothing yet. Its on a larger scale but your views curve is almost identical to mine as well.

On top of that the fact both of the views seem to be coming from regionally targeted areas it almost certainly has to be the algorithm, which is absolutely awesome i'd much rather get picked up by youtube itself rather than be posted on a forum!

Hopefully, its now slowing down as we head into the working day and it'll pick back up again this evening.

This is really why i absolutely love youtube, you just never really know whats around the corner or what weird things going to happen next

Yeah, I'm pretty sure it's the algorithm too. Hopefully it's from "suggested videos" because that's the best traffic source for growth but something tells me it's coming from a "regional trending" page and so it might not last. We shall see. I'll report back tomorrow when the stats update.[DOUBLEPOST=1518004458][/DOUBLEPOST]Update for me: The spike was/is because the video has been embedded on a very popular French website and the link to that article was also emailed out to subscribers of that website. It's still going strong but the traffic has slowed compared to Monday.

@evoloz - What about you?