YouTube Analytics Alternatives

[Shadeypwns]

Well considering we are discussing VidStats and Socialblade, I assumed we were tracking views. I know they track things like retention of viewers and sub increases. Subs your should be able to count own your own. For retention span of viewers, then yes I agree, an external site is much better. As for Google letting us down, I've simply gotten used to it by now.

You should be able to count subs on your own? Well technically you should be able to count anything on your own. Why use a website that tells you how many views you're getting when you can just write them down yourself. Why use a website to track your subscriber gain each hour when you can just check every hour yourself (who needs sleep). For retention span of viewers, other sites don't tell you that information, which was my entire point. You've managed to misread my post and agreed to the only point I didn't actually make. I'm not sure why you assumed this post was only about tracking views (you mentioned VidStats and Socialblade, and then immediately said "I know they track things like retention of viewers and sub increases" admitting that they do more than view tracking. Although you're wrong about retention, if you're talking about view times on your videos.)

Sorry if this sounds harsh, but you start off posting by stating incorrect things and expressing them as facts, and as you continue to post you appear to be misreading and misrepresenting information left and right. As an avid poster I take pride in attempting to keep all of my information as accurate as possible, and not express opinions as fact, and I hold others to that caliber as well.

 

[Unknown_User12]

The point
----------->
Your head

Not gonna bother with this one.

 

[Kanashimi]

For some reason my channel looks like this -
Does it take them time to update a channel that's never been looked up before? I would assume this is the case.

I can't say for certain because I searched for my own channel before it even had any videos, and then it was added to the system. It's possible it only might track from when it was initially added.

 

[ZaphodX]

All of them will only track after you have searched for yourself once.

Analytics is slightly better for accuracy, but all these sites update hourly and Youtube lags behind by about 2 days for me. You can't gauge/track any recent view or subscriber spikes for videos you have just posted on Analytics. I consider this a massive disadvantage.

 

[Ted Hamilton]

Hi all -

I'm the product manager for YouTube Analytics. I'd love to 1) clarify a few things and 2) find out what killer features you guys need and 2B) what better decisions you will be able to make because of them.

Regarding speed of data, in one way or another, your data all comes from my team, just at different points in the pipeline. We count and update all of the views and then we slice and dice them into YT Analytics. These services that are "faster" are taking our data after we've just straight added it up into a scalar value, like your viewcount, through the general YouTube API. So VidStatsX can ask for about 10 different numbers from us for a few thousand channels a few times a day and provide a great service - intraday updates along with a leaderboard to show you who's doing well and where you fit.

While we continually add up the numbers that VidStatsX uses, once a day we slice, dice, and sort the whole day's worth of data after it ends and make that available in YTA. This allows us to tell you how many views you got from a certain demographic, from a certain search keyword, and even more intensive things like how many unique cookies (a proxy for viewers) there were for your channel or video over the last day, 7 days, and 30 days.

I often hear people say data is two days late. In reality, it's about a half day late depending on your definition. We have to wait until the day ends before we process it and it takes about a half day to do that for the millions upon millions of channels and videos on YouTube. So, if it's the 15th and you go and look at your data, you may only see data as recent as the 13th, which kinda feels like two days old. However if you check back in a few hours, it will be there for the 14th, which only ended 12-15 hours ago.

Compounding the 2-day old perception is the fact that our "day" is defined by Pacific Time. So, if you're in Europe or Australia, your calendar might already read the 16th while the data on the UI reads the 13th. However much of that data in the 13th is actually from the 14th in Australia time. Not ideal obviously and some day we'd like to fix, but it's rather labor intensive to do and we have some other features we'd like to get out there first.

Regarding bugginess, we have our bugs like all software does. For instance, we collect "likes" by day, country, video, etc. The number of "likes" we showed in YTA might not have lined up with what was shown on the watch page because we formerly only collected "likes added". The reality is that people can also remove likes. So we started tracking likes added, likes removed, and "likes" which is the difference of the two. There are things like that become apparent if you collect data over long periods of time and things change over the course of that time. If you'll remember, likes and dislikes used to be star ratings. So we had to find a way to stuff a square peg in a round hole there and change 5 stars to two thumbs.

Enough defensiveness... what are you guys missing from Analytics that would allow you to perform better on YouTube? What decisions could you make if you had better data? I'm all ears! I also just now created a Google+ YouTube analytics community if any of you are interested - not to take anything away from YTTalk!

 

[Shadeypwns]

Hi all -

I'm the product manager for YouTube Analytics. I'd love to 1) clarify a few things and 2) find out what killer features you guys need and 2B) what better decisions you will be able to make because of them.

-Omitted for space-

I'm going to keep this very short since I've been up for around 26 hours right now, and I don't trust my safe to say anything requiring deep thought.

First off, something about YouTube Analytics just puts me off. The only time I ever visit it is when I want very specific information. How many favorites did this video get? What geological region is watching my videos the most the past 30 days? Whats the average viewer time for this video for the past 7 days? While Analytics is great for very very specific information, the general way it.. looks I guess? Is off-putting to me.

I visit sites like SocialBlade and VidStats (and ChannelMeter if they every get my dang channel tracked on there) for a few main reasons:

1. The UI is so simple, so very very simple. I click on SocialBlade's website maybe 3 or 4 times a day because as soon as the page loads I instantly see how many subscribers I've gotten since I last checked, how many channel views, how many contacts have added me, etc. Granted video views only updates once a day, but that's less important, I can track video views on my latest videos on my own just by going to my uploads page.

2. I find their information about my subscribers especially to be way more accurate than YouTube. I tested this over a course of 2 weeks. I checked Analytics, SocialBlade, and my channel a few times a day. Every time I would write down how many subscribers I gained manually, and compare to what YouTube said and what SocialBlade said. Almost literally everytime I looked, YouTube would have ridiculous numbers, like telling me I gained 9 subscribers on a day I gained one, or telling me I lost 4 subscribers on a day I gained 3 (this is total gain btw, I know YT tracks unsubs and subs individually). Meanwhile SocialBlade would have my sub numbers down pat almost everytime. Now that I stopped using Analytics to track my subs, I can actually tell when I get a huge boost in subs, and when I'm on a bit of a rut, and then attempt to go find out where those subs came from.

3. They don't require me to navigate 77 menus to find basic information. I suppose this goes along with UI, but whatever. If I want to see how many subscribers, views, favorites, channel views, and contacts I've gained in the last week on YouTube, these are all on totally seperate pages, and require me to filter the dates, click through menus, etc. etc. Meanwhile on SocialBlade it's right there, frontpage, instantly, on a chart, done. I already said Analytics is great for in-depth information, but Analytics now contains such a wide amount of information that it's impossible to just see at a glance how you're doing. I know the dashboard is supposed to do this for you, but rarely is any information on my dashboard actually relevant to things I care about. Oh cool, I got 50,000 monthly views, just like every other month. Oh yay, I achieved 34,000 minutes watched this month, who honestly even cares about this? Why do I need to know how much of peoples lives I'm wasting watching my videos? Oh look, I got 77 likes and 17 dislikes, this stat is totally useless since I have no idea what videos it even applies to until I click on one of them, lets go navigate some more menus, hurray!

Overall, YouTube has SO many channels to track, it can't possibly release information in a timely manner like these other sites do. YouTube has SO much information to track, it can't possibly display this information in a useful and simple manner like these other sites do. I'll keep using Analytics when I want to know how many people from Puerto Rico watch my Dead Space Lets Play between the dates of Feb 4 - Feb 7 and how long they watched the video for, what color their hair is, how old they are, what sex they are, who their parents are, and what's going to happen in their future. Alright so maybe Analytics isn't THAT in depth, but you get my point. Analytics most useful feature on the dashboard is top 10 videos, I LOVE THIS STAT! Do more things like this, and I'll use the service more. Users love being ranked. Rank my videos in a top 10, rank my channel amongst 50 similiar channels to mine, and show how all my stats compare to theirs. Rank my months I do best in, the types of videos I do best at, the types of viewers I attract most. Give me lists, and rankings, and comparisons!

TLDR; Promised I wouldn't write a wall of text, wrote a wall of text. Bah.

 

[Shantha]

I'm going to keep this very short since I've been up for around 26 hours right now, and I don't trust my safe to say anything requiring deep thought.

Yeah yeah yeah sure

TLDR; Promised I wouldn't write a wall of text, wrote a wall of text. Bah.

Hahahahha, rofl lol <3 who would've thought!

 

[Ted Hamilton]

Good stuff.

Specifically on #3, if you want to see how much has changed in the last week, you can select "last 7 days" in the date picker on the overview page and you should be able to see your subscribers, views, favorites, etc. right there on the page. We've tried to design it so that if you don't want more detail you don't need to touch any menus or navigate past the overview at all, but it sounds like we could do more here.

That you got 50k views in the last month is not important but how many views you got in the last week is, is that correct? We've considered many times putting settings on there that would allow you to default your date range to "last 7 days" or "since I last visited" and customize which metrics you see on your overview page and I'm sure one day hopefully not to far off we will!

If you want to see what months you did best in, find the metric you care about (sorry, you'll have to navigate to a report and click on a few buttons), click on the date dimension in the table, select monthly granularity in the graph, and sort. Likewise for weeks or countries or a number of other things.

Anyway, my overall take away is that you want to be able to customize your view to the metrics and dimensions and date ranges you care most about. And you want your data to be fast and accurate! ;-)

 

[Shadeypwns]

Good stuff.

Specifically on #3, if you want to see how much has changed in the last week, you can select "last 7 days" in the date picker on the overview page and you should be able to see your subscribers, views, favorites, etc. right there on the page. We've tried to design it so that if you don't want more detail you don't need to touch any menus or navigate past the overview at all, but it sounds like we could do more here.

That you got 50k views in the last month is not important but how many views you got in the last week is, is that correct? We've considered many times putting settings on there that would allow you to default your date range to "last 7 days" or "since I last visited" and customize which metrics you see on your overview page and I'm sure one day hopefully not to far off we will!

If you want to see what months you did best in, find the metric you care about (sorry, you'll have to navigate to a report and click on a few buttons), click on the date dimension in the table, select monthly granularity in the graph, and sort. Likewise for weeks or countries or a number of other things.

Anyway, my overall take away is that you want to be able to customize your view to the metrics and dimensions and date ranges you care most about. And you want your data to be fast and accurate! ;-)

You've caught the gist of it yeah. In essence, I'm lazy as hell, like most other internet users. I don't want to spend more than 30 seconds glimpsing at a page and seeing how my stats are doing, before I move on, since I check multiple times a day. Only every once in a while will I really dive in and check details. It would be nice to customize the overview more I suppose, so that I could have somethings defaulted, like you said with 7 days instead of 30, and maybe remove some stats I don't care about and add others in, or make them more apparent. Fast and accurate data is very important as well, yes!

When it comes to views, my monthly views only really need to be looked at once a month, right when I'm about to get paid and I want to see how my view numbers match up with my payments. Other than that, I'm way more concerned about video views, and more short term stats like weekly views. I think having the 7 day option defaulted on my dashboard/overview might solve a decent amount of issues I have with the system. Granted it's only 1 or 2 clicks to change it, so again, I'm just lazy as hell, but other sites do provide those stats instantly and I like that.

 

[Shadeypwns]

Yeah yeah yeah sure



Hahahahha, rofl lol <3 who would've thought!

I talk/type way too freaking much. I feel like I have to explain everything to everyone, I can't just say a sentence without explaining it! Like this post for instance.

/facepalm