Parth Vataliya
YouTube is home to some of the most viral content on the internet. Knowing which video will go viral and silently fade into obscurity is challenging. It is where scraping comes in — a technique we explain below that allows you to track YouTube videos and analyze their statistics and how they perform by country, platform, date posted, etc.
What is scraping?
Scraping, or web crawling, is a technique to extract data from websites that don’t have an API. You can identify which data you want and programmatically extract it. It means you can quickly analyze and use the data for your benefit, whether a digital marketing strategy or a quantitative research project.
Data scraping YouTube can be used to track and analyze your marketing campaigns using various metrics.
Why scrape data from YouTube?
As the world’s most popular video-sharing website, YouTube is a natural place to find high-quality lead-generation fodder. Its many videos provide a wealth of information, including:
- Videos’ popularity and views (usually determined by their views)
- Videos ratings and user reviews
- Original video creator’s biographical information
- Video titles, tags, descriptions, etc.
YouTube offers detailed datasets on various types of content. You can create outlooks for content generation, prospects, customers, marketing tactics, and other areas using YouTube data scraping. There are other websites where you can find similar info, but YouTube leads the pack in terms of volume, depth, and accuracy.
In this article, we will discuss how to scrape data from YouTube and display it in a chart using your Google Spreadsheet.
For example, let’s say you are a content marketing manager at a large eCommerce company. You want to use YouTube videos as part of your marketing strategy — so you set up an online video campaign on your page. Ensure each video is optimized for search engine ranking, has a catchy title and description, etc.
What types of data can be scraped from YouTube? How is it beneficial for your business?
YouTube provides excellent information on its website, including video titles, descriptions, tags, and locations. But the most critical metric views. This is the measurement of traffic that can help you gauge the popularity of certain content.
YouTube also gives you a list of external sites that have embedded your video, as well as its embedding code:
- Embedded video player
- Embedding code
There are many choices if you want to create a YouTube scraper/data collector/data extractor app. Some YouTube API libraries will scrape high-level stats like the number of views or how many times it’s been embedded on other sites
Below are five benefits of scraping YouTube for your business:
#1 Instant Access to YouTube Metrics
Scraping YouTube can be done in seconds with our simple-to-use web-based dashboard. We will show you the exact data you need to make smart decisions about the content you create, optimize the performance of your videos, keep tabs on competitors who are beating you to it, or see what has worked for other brands before.
#2 Measure the performance of your YouTube channel and individual videos
Create custom dashboards on YouTube statistics such as views, engagement rate, engagements, and more. With the help of our keyword search feature, you can track data for your channel and a specific keyword or channel. Scrape the statistics of a competitor’s channel or even a particular video to see how it performs within a specific country and across different platforms (desktop display & mobile).
#3 Analyze the performance of your YouTube channel and individual videos
Our YouTube Analytics feature will show you a wide array of data on your channel, including views, video views, engagement rates, and more. This data is not limited to YouTube channels but is made available to all marketers (and small businesses) with a Google account.
#4 Track the performance of your YouTube content across different countries
YouTube analytics is available worldwide and helps companies track international statistics for their brand across different locations. We can track statistics for your channels worldwide through our web dashboard interface.
Is it legal to scrape and use data from YouTube?
There are no restrictions on using YouTube data, so you can use any information you collect, whether it be your own or commercial content.
Scraping and acquiring this kind of content is legal, however, as long as you use the overall YouTube website and don’t show any search results to users outside of the site itself. Our software does not feed back to YouTube and does not display any information that can help identify or track individual users on our end.
How can you extract and collect information from YouTube?
Below are the steps to follow to scrape information from YouTube:
- Sign-up for a YouTube account and log in to your account.
- Copy the embed code for the video from which you want to scrape data. Paste it into our search feature above, and select “YouTube.” We will list all videos that contain it. We also have a “Related” tab that lists all videos that have embedded that piece of content on their website (website links will also be displayed on this page).
- Click the video you want to analyze on YouTube and hit “Scrape Metrics.” This feature will scrape the video analytics data for you.
- When we get your data request, we’ll automatically send it to your Google account.
- Export before/after data is collected
Once you have scraped YouTube IDs, you can export them from the spreadsheet tool in various formats, including CSV, Excel, and PDF — each one is slightly different.
There’s no limit to the amount of data we can collect on YouTube, so you can scrape as much information as you like. You can hire a data scraping services provider for this task, but it will take more than a few minutes to record the data.
Conclusion
For many businesses, social media and video are powerful tools that help increase exposure, brand awareness, and engagement. Because of this, data is vital for any company trying to get ahead of the competition.
For example:
Suppose you are a content marketer at an eCommerce e-commerce firm. In that case, you can find valuable insights about the success of specific campaigns by analyzing how your videos perform in views and shares.
Spend more time creating content your audience loves and less time trying to figure out what’s working — essentially: less guesswork. With more accurate data comes more accurate recommendations and predictions. Depending on your company’s specific needs, hiring a professional data scraping service provider can help you achieve this.
Scraping YouTube is one of the few ways to get actionable insights on the performance of your content and the actions that have impacted it. With these insights, you can work to improve your videos and videos to increase viewership and engagement.
Analytics are crucial in today’s digital world. In fact, YouTube itself has told us that “analytics are critical to understanding how content is performing.”
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