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Google
Analytics is a great tool to figure out the activity surrounding your
channel, where you might need improvement, getting the most out of
advertising, mobile
views, etc. But maybe you'd like a different opinion. Maybe you don't
like the way the stats are displayed. Maybe you'd like some other
kinds of information, not only about yourself but other channels, and
how you might compare to them. Well, Google Analytics, as powerful as
it is, isn't the only game in town. There are several other tools and
websites you can use that use the statistics in a different way and
interpret them differently.
A Sampling of YouTube User/Channel Statistics Tracking Tools
Here
are a few that you should know about. Many of these sites rank
channels differently, sometimes markedly different. It all depends on
what they weigh as most important. They all have different methods, and
it will be some combination of views, subscribers, comments,
engagement, and so forth. What's important is what works for you.
VidStatsX
VidStastX
might have the most exhaustive amount of information on the site.
While many tracking sites are all about what the top 100 YouTube
channels are and maybe separate them into categories and sub-categories,
VidStatsX also goes into ranks for individual videos. Want to
know what is really trending today, rather than rely on that suspect
YouTube "trending" page you can click on? VidStatsX has a page
dedicated to top viewed videos for the day, week, month, and all-time.
Each video has a rank that points to engagement or likeability.
VidStatsX
has a trademarked tool called FutureRank that projects how a channel
will perform over the next 7 days all the way up to 90 days. I think
this site breaks down every single way you can break down a video: by
genre, by favorites, by comments, ratings, and views.
If there was
one knock for me personally on VidStatsX it's that the data is so
dense, it's all that seems to populate the page. It's a bunch of
numbers and straightforward charts, with a presentation that isn't all
that attractive. There are occasional thumbnails representative of
videos and channels that spruce the site up, but for the most part it
can be overwhelming to look at. But for pure stats, VidStatsX has got
them all. Here's an example of a stats page they have, this one for YouTube's Top 10 Viewed:
SocialBlade
SocialBlade (who we interviewed last week) is
mostly about tracking channel figures, and it also breaks them down
into categories and "top" lists. They have their own ranking system, so
while the normal things like views and subscribers count, they have
their own formula. So above all this site is about comparing top
channels, and it breaks it down by country and category. Here's an
example list, using top viewed and top subscribers:
Again, it's a bunch of charts and numbers, so not much in the way of looks here, but a simple, basic tool to show who's who in YouTube.
ChannelMeter
ChannelMeter
has the nicest design of these three. It doesn't give you an automatic
set of lists like VidStatsX or SocialBlade do, it just has a simple
search field that you can type a channel name into and then it gives you
a nice group of graphs to work with on that channel. Statistics are
separated into subscribers, channel views, and video views, and you can
change the graph to show an incremental or cumulative presentation. The
range is anywhere from today to 3 months. You can change the stats to
"table" just like the above sites do, but it's nice to have graphic
representation here.ChannelMeter is a good tool to see what YouTubers were upset about in May, as you can see subscriber data fall dramatically in that month for just about everyone. Here's a look at Philip DeFranco's sxephil channel and his subscriber data for May:
That
came from YouTube's spring cleaning that occurred, taking out dormant
accounts and you know, being YouTube. That kind of graph makes the raw
data clearer, it gives it meaning. You can go to VidStatsX and find
this kind of data but this kind of presentation makes one question why
such a change occurred. When you compare the graph above with other big
channels, the picture becomes clear: "Something (not entirely the
channel's fault) happened."
One thing about ChannelMeter: if the
channel is somewhat new, you might not be able to find it right away.
And some rather well-established, though not well-viewed, channels don't
have complete data. So that's a bit of a flaw in this site.
Really,
in all, if you're very much serious about your channel and want to get
some awesome data, you can probably learn something from mainly Google
Analytics and then all three of these sites, and comparing each one of
them could give you your own raw data to work with so that your channel
is optimized.
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