Does the count of views of a video on YouTube include views from all embedded copies?

Tim,

Yes embedded videos are counted but not as eloquently as they are on BlipTV.
YouTube's method as their help forum explains has a slight hitch in that once the video reaches 300 counts a different count methodology is enabled and then the views are no longer displayed in real time and occasionally the embedded video counts become less accurate. A delay apparently happens with embedded video info and you can see jumps from 300 to 800 views suddenly because the counts usually come in large blocks. There is a thing called 'frozen view count' and it is a problem that YouTube is working on regarding embedded videos. BlipTV on the other hand has amazing analytics (I believe they use TubeMogul's tracking) that shows exactly how many views are coming from embedded sites and even shows which sites they come from.

YouTube statistics are easy to track. Upon logging into your account go to 'Insight Statistics'. They do have a comparison chart that shows the ups-and-downs of viewership at each moment in your video, compared to videos of similar length. I don't know if they provide replay info.

You can find views information for videos in your account by going to Account > Insight > Views > Select a video > Discovery.

This allows you to see where views came from, including embedded videos, external links, YouTube search, etc.



You can also drill down into most of the categories, for example, to find where the video was embedded.



There are a few ways to see attention and behavior while watching a video, though these are fairly non-transparent measurements. On the main Insight page, you will see a list of your current top videos, or you can see all videos by going to the All Videos tab. Both of these lists include a right column titled Attention, which shows a simple bar graph for each video showing Attention level.



If you click through to a specific video and go to Hot Spots, you can see a chart of user attention graphed against the video's timeline. This seems really useful, because it allows you to watch the video and attention graph side-by-side, so you can precisely identify sections that are more or less interesting. The Google blog explains how they calculate attention.



Overall, YouTube Insight provides a lot of the information a video publisher would be interested in. And though sometimes it is unclear what specifically is being measured, you can easily see which of your videos are popular.