Advice and answers from the Advanced Web Ranking Team
Youtube search engine tracking in AWR
Learn how to track the ranking positions of your videos on YouTube.
As opposed to standard website URLs that follow a logical structure (e.g., https://www.advancedwebranking.com/videos.html), the YouTube videos have a random structure (e.g., https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ex09nhZNHk). That is why tracking the ranking positions of your keywords on this search engine requires adding the channel and each URL of your YouTube videos in the project's settings.
Depending on your reporting needs, you can create dedicated campaigns for YouTube only, or you can track rankings for multiple search engines, such as Google, Amazon, and YouTube, under the same project.
The search types available for YouTube can be verified while entering the Add search engines wizard.
The Add search engines wizard can be opened either from the Add new project screen or by accessing the Settings > Search engines section of the currently selected project.
The tracking options for YouTube are as follows:
YouTube - both the ranking positions of the channels and videos returned in YouTube search are tracked.
YouTube Videos - the ranking positions of individual videos appearing in YouTube search results are reported.
YouTube Channels - the ranking positions of the channels displayed in the YouTube search are tracked.
YouTube Sponsored - the ranking positions of sponsored content appearing in YouTube searches are reported.
As I mentioned at the beginning of the article, so the ranking positions of YouTube content can be correctly reported with Advanced Web Ranking, the channel and each video URL must be added as aliases in the project's settings.
How to insert YouTube URLs as aliases to a project
The YouTube URLs can be inserted as aliases in 2 ways:
1. Directly from the user interface
a) When adding the YouTube search engine to the project by entering the list of video URLs, one per line, into the designated field:
b) If the YouTube search engine is already added to the project you can insert the channel and the video URLs as custom aliases from the Settings > Overview section:
2. Programmatically using the developer API feature.
Use the update project API call to insert all YouTube URLs to the project at once. The API token can be accessed by navigating to the Connectors & API section.
If you want to keep an eye on your competitors and see which of their videos rank for the keywords you are monitoring, insert their video URLs as aliases into the Competitors section:
Do you have any other questions? Don’t hesitate to get in touch and we will keep building the FAQ.
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