BY BREE BROUWER
YouTube users and creators have been asking data-rich Google to share some of the analytics love for a while now. It seems as if Google is listening, because as of Sept. 18, minute-by-minute stats are now available on YouTube.
When you sign into the video site, you’ll have the ability to view minute-related analytics from your dashboard. Once you’re there, you’ll now see two charts of data available for your last five videos: an hour-by-hour analytics graph for the last 48 hours, and now a minute-by-minute analytics graph for the last hour. YouTube user DogCheeseCake already made a video showing off the new dashboard.
YouTube’s help page does mention one caveat about latency. However, the site makes up for this minor problem by automatically refreshing the page for you:
There is a latency of a few minutes between the occurrence of the view and its display in the report; data is then automatically updating, without the need to refresh the page. The “current” hour bar is highlighted to stress that the hour is still incomplete. Realtime data is estimated and meant to provide general guidance on potential view activity on your videos. This approximate character of the numbers is also shown in the rounding off to two significant digits.
Before this new feature, YouTube only offered basic hour-by-hour analytics on your last five videos. While the minute-by-minute reports are still only listed for your five most recent videos on the dashboard (you can always select an individual report for other videos), this data is as close to real-time stats as YouTube users have seen.
This new feature should help creators better understand how viewers are interacting with their videos within minutes of uploading. Consequently, they’ll be able to make impromptu marketing or promotional strategies to boost the video’s reach and grow their influence.
Illustration by Jason Reed