How to Determine Referral Sources on YouTube

Find out how visitors discovered your YouTube video with the free Insight tool.

YouTube automatically tracks visitor data for all uploaded video clips and allows the video uploaded to access this information with the YouTube Insights tool. YouTube tracks several different metrics, including the number of video views, the country or territory location of each visitor and the age group of each visitor. YouTube also publishes referral source data so that you can determine how your visitors find and access your video clips.

Instructions

1. Log into YouTube. Click the down-arrow button next to your YouTube username on the right-hand side of the top navigation menu.

2. Click “Videos” in the context menu to open the “My Videos and Playlists” page.

3. Scroll down the page to find the video clip for which you want the referral source data.

4. Click the “Insight” button below the video clip title, thumbnail and description to open the Insight statistics page. The page contains a statistics menu for all your videos. Below this, you’ll find the statistics menu for the video clip that you selected.

5. Click the “Discovery” link under the video title in the left-hand menu. Scroll to the bottom of the page to view a breakdown of referral source data, including the number and percentage of views from related YouTube videos, YouTube searches and external websites.

6. Click on each referral category to view more detailed information for this referral source type. For example, click on “External Websites” to view the number of referrals from specific website URLs.

Tips & Warnings

• View combined statistics for all your YouTube videos by following the same procedure, but click “Discovery” under “All Videos” in the left-hand menu in step 5.

References

• YouTube Help; YouTube Insight; Discovery Report

Resources

• YouTube: What Can We Help You With?