Traffic from YouTube

[Dan-Lawrence]

Hi

I've suggested a client add annotated links to the end of their YT vids to help get traffic from YT

My clients video guy has suggested setting up a hidden redirect page so we can tell how many people come to the website from youtube

I take it this is not necessary since traffic from YT will be easily identified by Google analytics anyway ?

Cheers

Dan

[Essential-Pest]

From my understanding, you're asking if you should have tracking from youtube to your website, or if Google Analytics will show that traffic based on how much traffic your YT is getting.

If that is the case, then I would suggest tracking them individually as you said. The Google Analytics tracking only tracks how many people go to your youtube, not how many people go to youtube and click your website link.

Therefore, Google Analytics will not show traffic going from youtube to your website, only your traffic to youtube.

Hope this helps.

[David-Kley]

If you want the most accurate traffic report possible, then I would set up a custom goal in analytics using your landing page URL. Depending upon what you are trying to do, you could set up a page that is targeted directly to your YouTube refferals, and focus on promoting conversions. Or another option is to just clone the home page to a different URL and set it to NO INDEX, NO FOLLOW and have them land on that when they click the link.

https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1116091?hl=en

[Dan-Lawrence]

Thanks Noran

Surely GA does show traffic from YT to a website since is referral traffic and would be listed ? but that could be from anywhere on YT not necessarily clients YT channel/videos hence we do want to set up tracking. So is a hidden redirect a good way to do this ?

cheers

dan

[Dan-Lawrence]

Thanks for the info David

So if i did that (goals) would there be no need for setting up hidden redirect the video guy suggested ?

Since we are wanting traffic to go straight to homepage can you edit goals so only registers a goal when coming from a certain location (YT) ?

thanks

Dan

[anthonydnelson]

IMO, the best solution would be to Tag your URLs with UTM Tags.

• Source: youtube
• Medium: social
• Name: annotations

With this method, you can link to anywhere on your site and get accurate data in analytics. You can learn more about them here: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033867?hl=en

[Dan-Lawrence]

That's great thanks Anthony !!

Do i need to set anything up directly in GA (custom campaigns) or just filling in that form and using the subsequent url will be all that's required to start tracking ?

Also i take it via this method we can set up different url for each video to compare the performance of each videos ability to drive traffic ?

Also if i link to product/landing pages from a video does GA e-commerce tracking report the link/campaign as a source of conversions ?

All Best

Dan

[anthonydnelson]

Just start using tagged URLs.

You our will find the data under Aquisition->Campaigns.

Be sure to name consistently. YouTube is different than youtube.

[anthonydnelson]

And, yes two your last two questions.

Use the the additional tags to specify the video content. Will allow you to attribute conversions, goals, everything in GA.

[Dan-Lawrence]

fantastic ! thanks so much for your help Anthony !!

All Best

Dan