FREE YouTube analytics

You cannot access detailed YouTube Analytics directly on YouTube for other channels, as YouTube Analytics is limited to your own channel. However, you can use third-party tools such as Socialinsider to view and analyze statistics of other YouTube channels. These tools provide insights like subscriber counts, views, engagement rates, video performance, and more.

Impressions in YouTube Analytics represent the number of times your video thumbnails were shown to viewers on YouTube through browsing, search, or recommendations. It measures how often your content is being presented to potential viewers, which is an important factor in understanding your video's reach and discoverability.

YouTube Analytics provides detailed data about your channel and videos, including:

- Views and watch time
- Audience demographics and geography
- Traffic sources (how viewers find your videos)
- Engagement metrics such as likes, comments, shares, and subscribers gained or lost
- Click-through rates (how often viewers click on your thumbnails)
- Audience retention (how long viewers watch your videos)
- Revenue reports if monetized.

YouTube Shorts analytics can be analyzed similarly to regular videos but with a focus on metrics relevant to short-form content such as:

- Views and watch time specific to Shorts
- Audience retention rates (important for short videos)
- Traffic sources, especially from the Shorts shelf or recommendations
- Engagement metrics like likes, comments, and shares.

Using YouTube Studio or third-party tools such as Socialinsider, you can track which Shorts perform best, optimal posting times, and audience preferences to improve your Shorts strategy.

To read YouTube Analytics:

- Start with the Overview to see key metrics like views, watch time, and subscriber changes.

- Dive into Reach to understand impressions, click-through rates, and traffic sources.

- Check Engagement for watch time, average view duration, and top videos. - Explore Audience for demographics, returning viewers, and unique viewers.

- Use comparisons and filters by date or video to identify trends.

- Look at graphs and charts to visualize performance over time.

This structured approach helps you identify what content works and how to tailor your strategy.

YouTube Analytics does include views from yourself watching your own videos, at least initially. When you watch your own video while signed in, it can register as a view and show up in your analytics. However, YouTube's system typically filters out repeated views from the same account over time, often counting only one view per account to avoid inflating the numbers artificially. So, if you watch your video multiple times from the same account, it might initially count multiple views but will usually adjust and count only one in the long run.

In YouTube Analytics, "external" refers to traffic sources that come from outside of YouTube, such as links from websites, social media platforms, search engines, or embedded videos on other sites. This metric helps you understand how viewers are finding your content beyond YouTube itself.