Using Sheets and the YouTube API to track video analytics

I host a biweekly video series on YouTube called The State of the Web and being the data nerd that I am, I wanted a way to monitor the public stats about each video to see how they're performing: number of views, likes, dislikes, comments, etc. In this post I walk you through how to set up your own dashboard to monitor the videos you care about.

You can see my finished product in this sheet. If you'd like, you can just make a copy of that sheet and plug in your own videos, but keep in mind that you may still need to follow some of these steps to get things like the YouTube API enabled.

Getting started

You'll need a blank Google Sheet to get started. Rename the default sheet to "Video Stats" so there's an identifiable name for it in the script.

Row 1 will be the headings for the table of stats:

• Video Title
• Video ID
• Views
• Likes
• Dislikes
• Comments
• Duration

The only input needed by you is the title and ID for each video in columns A and B. Optionally, you can add the following columns for more stats:

• Likes per View
• Dislikes per View
• Percent Likes
• Percent Dislikes
• Comments per View

These are calculated locally from the API results using simple Sheets formulas. For example, calculating the percent of likes uses this formula: =IFERROR(D2/(D2+E2), ""). One trick to apply the same formula to all cells in the column is to select the cell with the formula already applied, press Cmd+Shift+Down to select all following cells in the column, and press Cmd+D to apply the formula. The IFERROR function prevents division by zero errors for empty rows.

You can also format the columns to prettify their respective values. For example, the duration looks best in MM:SS format, while the calculated fields look best as percents.

Next, create a "Named Range" for the Video ID values by going to Data > Named Ranges... and adding a new range called "IDs" for range 'Video Stats'!B2:B1000. This allows the script to more easily scan the list of video IDs.

The brains of the analytics

To make the dashboard work, we need to talk to YouTube and get stats about each video. That's possible with a bit of Apps Script, which you can write by going to Tools > Script Editor.

In the newly opened editor, name your project "YouTube Analytics" and paste this script:

// This is "Sheet1" by default. Keep it in sync after any renames.
var SHEET_NAME = 'Video Stats';

// This is the named range containing all video IDs.
var VIDEO_ID_RANGE_NAME = 'IDs';

// Update these values after adding/removing columns.
var Column = {
  VIEWS: 'C',
  LIKES: 'D',
  DISLIKES: 'E',
  COMMENTS: 'F',
  DURATION: 'G'
};

// Adds a "YouTube" context menu to manually update stats.
function onOpen() {
  var spreadsheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActive();
  var entries = [{name: "Update Stats", functionName: "updateStats"}];

  spreadsheet.addMenu("YouTube", entries);
};

function updateStats() {
  var spreadsheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActive();
  var videoIds = getVideoIds();
  var stats = getStats(videoIds.join(','));
  writeStats(stats);
}

// Gets all video IDs from the range and ignores empty values.
function getVideoIds() {
  var spreadsheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActive();
  var range = spreadsheet.getRangeByName(VIDEO_ID_RANGE_NAME);
  var values = range.getValues();
  var videoIds = [];
  for (var i = 0; i < values.length; i++) {
    var value = values[i][0];
    if (!value) {
      return videoIds;
    }
    videoIds.push(value);
  }
  return videoIds;
}

// Queries the YouTube API to get stats for all videos.
function getStats(videoIds) {
  return YouTube.Videos.list('contentDetails,statistics', {'id': videoIds}).items;
}

// Converts the API results to cells in the sheet.
function writeStats(stats) {
  var spreadsheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActive();
  var sheet = spreadsheet.getSheetByName(SHEET_NAME);
  var durationPattern = new RegExp(/PT((\d+)M)?(\d+)S/);
  for (var i = 0; i < stats.length; i++) {
    var cell = sheet.setActiveCell(Column.VIEWS + (2+i));
    cell.setValue(stats[i].statistics.viewCount);
    cell = sheet.setActiveCell(Column.LIKES + (2+i));
    cell.setValue(stats[i].statistics.likeCount);
    cell = sheet.setActiveCell(Column.DISLIKES + (2+i));
    cell.setValue(stats[i].statistics.dislikeCount);
    cell = sheet.setActiveCell(Column.COMMENTS + (2+i));
    cell.setValue(stats[i].statistics.commentCount);
    cell = sheet.setActiveCell(Column.DURATION + (2+i));
    var duration = stats[i].contentDetails.duration;
    var result = durationPattern.exec(duration);
    var min = result && result[2] || '00';
    var sec = result && result[3] || '00';
    cell.setValue('00:' + min + ':' + sec);
  }
}

Refer to the comments in the code for a description of what each function does.

There are a couple more things left to do in the script editor to make everything work:

1. Enable the API
2. Set up triggers so that the stats are updated automatically

To enable the API, go to Resources > Advanced Google Services... and scroll down to and enable the YouTube Data API. You must also click the "Google Cloud Platform API Dashboard" link and search for "YouTube Data API v3" to enable it for your project.

To set up triggers, go to Edit > Current project's triggers and configure it as seen in the screenshot above. It does two things:

• updates the stats every 15 minutes, so you can leave the sheet open and get the latest data
• updates the stats as soon as you open the sheet

There is also a "YouTube" menu added to the sheet if you want to manually trigger an update.

Wrapping up

That's all there is to it. My sheet also has some examples of secondary sheets that summarize the stats with other tables and charts, but you can customize your dashboard any way you like.

If you own the YouTube channel on which the videos are uploaded, you may also have access to private stats like watchtime and subscription data. But the great thing about this script is that you can monitor any YouTube videos regardless of ownership — it's all public info!

Comments

[Sorin Amzu]

Rick, this works great.
Problem is: I'm toying around with the idea of having multiple sheets. I created a new one, renamed it something else, replaced that name in your YouTube Analytics scripts, but it doesn't work on this new sheet.
It seems to copy existing values from the original Sheet1.

Any way around this?

Thanks a million!

[Rick Viscomi]

Hard to tell without looking at the whole spreadsheet. Are you able to share it with me?

[Sorin Amzu]

Here is the sheet: docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1kj...

Here is the modified script, trying to get data for the first sheet (Stats For Video): script.google.com/d/1fkQ6lOM3fNnH7...

Cheers!

[Rick Viscomi]

Ah, the issue is that the "IDs" named range is pointing to the old 'Video Stats' sheet.

[Sorin Amzu]

Now I don't know what to think any more :(
I've renamed the sheet back to the original name. I've copy-pasted your script again.
docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1kj...
I get this error: TypeError: Cannot call method "getValues" of null. at getVideoIds(Code:35) at updateStats(Code:26)

What am I doing wrong?

[Rick Viscomi]

Go to "Data > Named ranges..." to define a range of cells. There should be one named "IDs" spanning B2:B1000. This corresponds to the VIDEO_ID_RANGE_NAME variable in the script.

[Sorin Amzu]

Yup. Works like a charm now.
Can this be modified to track several sheets? Or would I need to create a script for each sheet?

Thanks again!

[Rick Viscomi]

The script needs to know which video IDs to look up, so if you want to spread the IDs over multiple sheets, you can create multiple named ranges and iterate through each one. No need for multiple scripts.

[René Kurfürst]

Thanks for the very detailed and nice structured post. I have done it that way and it worked fine, until I came to the 51st row of my table. Is there a limitation by 50? I tried to find a break point in the code but didn't found one.

[Rick Viscomi]

Two things come to mind:

1. The named range may be ending on B50 rather than B1000.
2. The YouTube API may have limitations on the number of video IDs in a single request. I can't find the definitive answer, but the docs have more info on quota: developers.google.com/youtube/v3/g...

[Joe Allam]

Hey Rick, thanks for a fantastic article — I've got mine all set up looking beautiful! I've also run into the 50 API calls limit and upon research found that it definitely is the ID call with a specific limit, which can't be changed.

To get around this, I've decided to create different sheets for each year's video uploads. However, it seems overkill to duplicate the script for each sheet. I noticed in another reply you mentioned iterating through multiple named ranges. How would I go about referencing either multiple named ranges, or triggering the script multiple times (in the event all named ranges combined are over 50)?

Thanks!

[pranay]

Hi Rick,

thank you for this article. However, I'm experiencing a problem with the code and I'm utterly new to coding. When I'm trying to run the code, it is not happening and an error message pops up TypeError: Cannot call method "getValues" of null.

Please tell me where I could have gone wrong and also how to rectify it. Thanks a ton.

Pranay

[aakanksha-dp]

I am facing the same issue. Did you fix this? If yes, please help me on how to fix it.

[Shiva Kumar]

Hey I am trying to track my youtube usage across the computer and phone. Given this approach is awesome and works well, it is very cumbersome to manually input the video titles and the Vid IDs. I do have the YouTube history enabled, I want only a suggestion from you about the approach I can take to be able to log the Videos I have watched and also on which dates based on my history.

Thank you

[norman simon]

Hi Rick,
First of all thank you very much for this post.

I have an issue with the code, it looks like when a video ID is wrong in the list (for example if the video has been deleted from youtube), the script assigns to this wrong ID the data of the following ID.
I think that the function GetVideoIds builds the list skipping this kind of wrong ID. This results in a list of Ids smaller than my column of Ids.
Then, when we get data with others functions, the data is pasted in front of the wrong video.
I would like to add a condition "If the ID doesn't correpond to a valid video --> Do not just skip it but addd a message or a 0"
Unfortunately, I am not good enough in this language to do so.
Could you please assist me with this ?

Thank you very much !

Norman

[Tyler Dickey]

Hey Rick! I'm having some issues setting up the triggers for this sheet. Once I set the trigger up as shown in your article I get caught in this endless loop of having to log into my google account and give the script permission to get data from YouTube. Any tips?

[Marco Scarpa]

Hi Rick, I'm getting this error:

TypeError: Cannot call method "setActiveCell" of null.

This is all the script. I've just changed the column names. Name range "IDs" start from row 7 to 200 and on N7 I've my first YT ID...

// This is "Sheet1" by default. Keep it in sync after any renames.
var SHEET_NAME = 'YT Stats 3.2';

// This is the named range containing all video IDs.
var VIDEO_ID_RANGE_NAME = 'IDs';

// Update these values after adding/removing columns.
var Column = {
VIEWS: 'V',
LIKES: 'Y',
DISLIKES: 'Z',
COMMENTS: 'X',
DURATION: 'O'
};

// Adds a "YouTube" context menu to manually update stats.
function onOpen() {
var spreadsheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActive();
var entries = [{name: "Update Stats", functionName: "updateStats"}];

spreadsheet.addMenu("YouTube", entries);
};

function updateStats() {
var spreadsheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActive();
var videoIds = getVideoIds();
var stats = getStats(videoIds.join(','));
writeStats(stats);
}

// Gets all video IDs from the range and ignores empty values.
function getVideoIds() {
var spreadsheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActive();
var range = spreadsheet.getRangeByName(VIDEO_ID_RANGE_NAME);
var values = range.getValues();
var videoIds = [];
for (var i = 0; i < values.length; i++) {
var value = values[i][0];
if (!value) {
return videoIds;
}
videoIds.push(value);
}
return videoIds;
}

// Queries the YouTube API to get stats for all videos.
function getStats(videoIds) {
return YouTube.Videos.list('contentDetails,statistics', {'id': videoIds}).items;
}

// Converts the API results to cells in the sheet.
function writeStats(stats) {
var spreadsheet = SpreadsheetApp.getActive();
var sheet = spreadsheet.getSheetByName(SHEET_NAME);
var durationPattern = new RegExp(/PT((\d+)M)?(\d+)S/);
for (var i = 0; i < stats.length; i++) {
var cell = sheet.setActiveCell(Column.VIEWS + (2+i));
cell.setValue(stats[i].statistics.viewCount);
cell = sheet.setActiveCell(Column.LIKES + (2+i));
cell.setValue(stats[i].statistics.likeCount);
cell = sheet.setActiveCell(Column.DISLIKES + (2+i));
cell.setValue(stats[i].statistics.dislikeCount);
cell = sheet.setActiveCell(Column.COMMENTS + (2+i));
cell.setValue(stats[i].statistics.commentCount);
cell = sheet.setActiveCell(Column.DURATION + (2+i));
var duration = stats[i].contentDetails.duration;
var result = durationPattern.exec(duration);
var min = result && result[2] || '00';
var sec = result && result[3] || '00';
cell.setValue('00:' + min + ':' + sec);
}
}

[Rick Viscomi]

The error is saying that getSheetByName("YT Stats 3.2") is coming up empty. Did you rename it without updating the SHEET_NAME variable?

[KurisC]

docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1ui...

If you check through the videos yourself, you will notice that at "Our Summer" and below, the views are aligned with the wrong video ID, but I am not sure what is causing this?

Thank You :D

[olekstomek]

Hi, thanks for showing us the use of Google Apps Script. ;)
I use your code and spreadsheet and adapted it in my solution which allows you to check the statistics of videos in the given YouTube playlist. This is the link to the repository: github.com/olekstomek/gscript-trac...

[DakotaGeek]

Hi Rick, I'm following your instructions and although everything appears correct, I'm getting the following error when running the script.
"API call to youtube.videos.list failed with error: No filter selected. Expected one of: chart, id, myRated, idParam (line 49, file "Code")"

Line 49 in the script is an exact copy-paste from your article as follows:
"return YouTube.Videos.list('contentDetails,statistics', {'id': videoIds}).items;"

Any thoughts on why this error would occur?

[DakotaGeek]

Some of the other posts here answered my question. This is an example of hitting the limit of 50 requests to the API.

Since the Named Range is 999 entries long, perhaps Rick could update his script to iterate through 999 entries in chunks of 50?