Last Updated: May 26, 2022

UPDATE: The ability to link your YouTube Channel to Google Analytics was discontinued on Nov 17, 2020

In this article, you will learn about Google Analytics YouTube Integration. Learn how to:

#1 Integrate your Google Analytics account with your YouTube channel.

#2 Create a YouTube channel view.

#3 Learn about what YouTube Channel View can and can’t do for you.

#4 Learn about the insight you get through your main view regarding YouTube.

#5 Learn what Google Analytics and YouTube integration can’t do for you.

#6 Track the traffic coming from external links embedded in your YouTube videos

+ You will also get a custom Report for advanced YouTube Analytics

Integrating your Google Analytics account with your YouTube channel page

To integrate YouTube channel page with Google Analytics, follow the steps below:

Step-1: Login to your Google Analytics account and find and note down the ID of your Google Analytics property:

If you are not sure about how to find your Google Analytics property ID then checkout this article: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1032385?hl=en

Step-2: Create a new YouTube channel. You need a YouTube channel before you can integrate it with Google Analytics.

To create a new channel follow the instructions mentioned in this article: https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/1646861?hl=en

If you already have YouTube channel then skip this step.

Step-3: Visit the Advanced Settings page of your YouTube channel:

Step-4: Scroll down to the bottom of the ‘Advanced Settings’ page, enter your Google Analytics property ID and then click on the ‘save’ button as shown below:

This action will complete the integration of your youtube channel with your Google Analytics property.

Note: Even if you use Google Tag Manager, the process of integrating your Youtube channel with Google Analytics is still the same.

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Creating a YouTube Channel View

Create a new filtered view that includes only the traffic from YouTube.  This will make it easy to analyse the usage data of your YouTube channel page. Follow the steps below to create YouTube channel View:

Step-1: Go to the ‘Admin’ section of your main view, click on ‘View Settings’ and then click on ‘copy view’ to create a copy of your main view.

Step-2: Name the new view as [your website name] + ‘YouTube Channel View’.

For example, Optimize Smart YouTube Channel View:

Step-3: Create a new custom include filter for this view with the following configuration:

This filter allows only the traffic from YouTube.

Note: You can find more details about creating filtered views from this article: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033162?hl=en

What insight do you get through YouTube Channel View?

Through YouTube Channel view:

#1 You can track how users find your YouTube Channel page.

You can get this information through various ‘Acquisition’ reports in your Youtube Channel view:

#2 You can track how users interacted with your YouTube channel page.

You can get this information through various ‘Behavior’ reports in your Youtube Channel view:

#3 You can track how users converted on your channel page.

You can get this information through various ‘Conversions’ reports in your Youtube Channel view:

#4 You can get demographic and psychographic data of your channel’s audience.

You can get this information through various ‘Audience’ reports in your Youtube Channel view:

#5 You can determine the videos which brought maximum number of users to your channel page.

You can get this information through ‘All Pages’ report (under Behavior > Site Content) in your Youtube Channel view:

What insight can’t you get through YouTube Channel View?

Through YouTube Channel view:

#1 You can’t track player states (play, pause, length of video watched, average visit duration etc) of individual videos embedded on your website. This is because YouTube channel view can’t report on the website usage data of your main website.

#2 You can’t track the traffic coming to your website from the external links embedded in your videos. This is because YouTube channel view can’t report on the website usage data of your main website.

What insight do you get through your main view regarding YouTube?

Once you have integrated your Google Analytics account with your YouTube channel page,  you get all of the insight you can get from your ‘YouTube Channel view’ in your main view. In addition to this:

#1 You can track player states of individual videos embedded on your website

If you have embedded YouTube videos on your website and you are using a video tracking script, then you can the track the player states (play, pause, length of video watched, average visit duration etc) of individual videos and see the tracking data through ‘Top Events’ report (under Behavior > Events) in your main view:

#2 You can track the traffic coming to your website from the external links embedded in your videos.

If you are using campaign tracking parameters on the external links embedded in your YouTube videos then you can the track the traffic you are getting from such links through ‘All Campaigns’ report (under Acquisition > Site Campaigns) in your main view:

I will show you later how you can track traffic from external links embedded in your videos.

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What don’t you get through Google Analytics and YouTube Channel Integration?

Now the time has come to manage your expectations. There is still a lot of YouTube video analytics data you can’t track either through ‘YouTube Channel View’ or through your main view. Through Google Analytics and YouTube channel integration:

1. You can’t track the number of subscribers, and subscribers gained or lost in a particular time period.
2. You can’t track likes and dislikes on your Youtube videos.
3. You can’t track the number of videos added to a video playlist.
4. You can’t track audience comments on your videos.
5. You can’t track the player states (play, pause, length of video watched, average visit duration, etc) of your individual videos watched on the YouTube website.
6. You can’t track the player states of your videos embedded on some third-party website.

To track all of this data, you need to use the various analytics reports provided by YouTube:

Note: You can access these reports by visiting the YouTube Analytics page: https://www.youtube.com/analytics

Tracking traffic coming from external links embedded in YouTube videos

In order to track the traffic coming from external links embedded in your Youtube videos follow the steps below:

Step-1: Verify your YouTube account from here: https://www.youtube.com/verify. You need to verify your YouTube account and your account must be in good standing before you can become eligible for external annotation links.

Step-2: Click on the ‘Annotation’ tab in your YouTube account:

You will now see a notification bar asking you to enable your YouTube account for external annotation links:

Step-3: Click on the ‘Enable’ button and then agree to the terms and conditions by clicking on the ‘I Accept’ button.

Step-4: Visit the Advanced Settings page of your YouTube channel, once again:

Then add the website you want to associate with the channel:

Step-5: Go back to the ‘Annotation’ tab and select an annotation type (say Note) from the drop-down menu:

Step-6: Configure your annotation like the one below:

Step-7: Pay special attention to the configuration where:

• I selected the ‘Link’ checkbox
• Selected ‘Associate Website’ from the drop-down menu
• Entered a URL with campaign tracking parameters

Following is the URL I used:

https://www.optimizesmart.com/?utm_source=youtube&utm_medium=social&utm_content=ga-debugging-part2-video&utm_campaign=youtube-videos

Note: It is important that you use campaign tracking parameters because only through campaign tracking parameters, you can determine which particular video sent traffic to your website.

Now when someone plays my video on YouTube, he will see a note at the end of the video which provides a link to my website:

When a user clicks on this note, he will be taken to my website and the click will be recorded by Google Analytics. That’s how you can track the traffic coming from external links embedded in your Youtube videos.

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Custom Report for Advanced YouTube Analytics

Through this custom report, you can track the play states (play, pause, length of video watched) of the Youtube videos embedded on your website provided your event category is ‘Youtube Videos’ and you are using the video tracking script provided on this page: https://www.optimizesmart.com/youtube-video-tracking-via-google-tag-manager/. Otherwise, you need to change the filter used for this report before you can use it.

This custom report has got the following five tabs:

#1 Embedded Video Data – Flat Table => This tab reports the pages on which the video was watched as event action and ‘player state + video name’ are reported as event label:

#2 Embedded Video Data – Explorer => This tab reports the pages on which the video was watched as event action and ‘player state + video name’ are reported as event label.

But event label is one level deep and can be accessed only by clicking on an event action:

Such type of categorization allows you to determine the web pages which drive maximum video engagement.

#3 Audience Geo location => This tab reports on the location (Country, Region, City) of your video audience:

#4 Audience Demographic => This tab reports on the gender, age and user type (new or returning) of your video audience.

Through this report you can determine:

# Which gender engaged the most with your embedded videos

# Which age group engaged the most with your embedded videos.

# Whether new users watched more embedded videos than returning users.

# Which embedded videos were watched by particular gender and age group and where (on which pages) these videos were watched

#5 Traffic Sources => Through this tab you can determine the traffic sources which are sending the audience for your videos.

Download this custom report from Google Analytics Solution Gallery 

Other article you will find useful: YouTube video tracking via Google Tag Manager

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Frequently asked questions about Google Analytics and YouTube integration