YouTube is one of the most popular video sharing platforms on the internet, with millions of users from all around the world. If you are a content creator on YouTube, you likely already know the importance of understanding your channel’s performance. This is where YouTube Analytics comes in.

YouTube provides a built-in analytics platform that can help you understand your channel’s performance. It allows you to track various metrics such as views, watch time, audience demographics, and more.

If you are familiar with Google Analytics, you will find that YouTube Analytics is much easier to use and understand. However, discerning the reasons behind your channel’s performance on YouTube can still be difficult. In this article, we will explore the basics of YouTube Analytics and how to find and interpret your data.

So, how do you access YouTube Analytics?

It’s quite simple. First, sign in to your YouTube account. Then, click on the circular icon containing your profile picture located at the top right corner of the page. From the dropdown menu, select “YouTube Studio”. You will then be taken to your channel dashboard, which displays a quick overview of your channel’s performance.

The dashboard provides a top-level idea of views, watch hours, and revenue across the whole channel over the last month. You’ll also see recent comments, subscribers, and recommended reading. However, to get truly helpful data, you will need to go deeper.

The Analytics tab in YouTube Studio provides details and graphs showing metrics calculated for your whole channel. This tab pulls data from all your individual videos to display here. On the graph, you can click each metric at the top to see its corresponding graph. You’ll also see a real-time view of activity on your channel and a quick list of your top-performing content.

Under the Content tab, you’ll see views, impressions, click-through rates, and average view duration. Average view duration is the average amount of time that a single viewer watches a video. In the Content tab, you’ll also see data about where impressions and views come from, whether it’s YouTube search, YouTube features, external, and more.

The Audience tab displays data about returning and unique viewers, subscribers, and basic demographic information about viewers. The tab also gives you insight into what other channels and videos your viewers like to watch. The Research tab contains a basic keyword research tool that allows you to see search terms related to the term you input. It will tell you broadly about the volume, whether it’s high, low, and so on. It will also identify search terms where it thinks there is a “content gap,” and you can see searches that your viewers make.

If you’re already familiar with the basics and looking for more customization options, you can switch to Advanced Mode. You will see the “Advanced Mode” button in the top right corner of the screen. Under every graph, you might have also noticed a “See More” button. All of these links lead to the advanced interface. This is where you can customize the metrics on your charts.

Under the Content tab, you can view and adjust details for your individual videos. This tab lists all of your uploaded videos and livestreams. You’ll see information like views, comments, and likes. This is where you can adjust all your video’s details and metadata, including the title, description, tags, thumbnail, category, audience and age restriction, language and captions, date and location, comment policy, add subtitles, end screens, and cards.