YouTube Now Tracks Viewer Origins

By Daisy Whitney

YouTube introduced a new feature for its video creators today that helps them better understand where viewers are coming from, the company announced on its blog today.

The new feature is part of the site’s Insights tool, itself introduced two weeks ago. With the new feature, YouTube is offering creators a “Discovery” tab that shows whether viewers of their videos landed there by searching on YouTube or Google, browsing under “related videos,” receiving a link to the video from an e-mail or Web site, or watched it in an embedded player off YouTube.

YouTube said Insight provides information on “the specific YouTube or Google search queries that led to your video, as well as the external Web sites driving traffic to your content.”

The new feature should help creators better understand their viewers and which sites are most effective in driving traffic to their YouTube videos.