YouTube Adds Referrals, Changes Layout

YouTube has made some updates to its site, adding referrer logs to its analytics package and changing the layout of video pages.

Part of the Insight analytics toolset, the new Discovery feature tells you whether your video was found through a YouTube or Google search, by browsing under “related videos,” linked to from an email or web site, or watched through an embedded player somewhere. You can also see what search terms were used to find your video as well as a list of external websites sending traffic your way. (Be sure to thank them!)

Though YouTube has denied it’s competing directly with white-label video providers, offering APIs, analytics, advertising and now referral information (for free!) seems like a pretty complete solution for video creators to us (if you don’t mind the YouTube watermark).

Some of those referral tools can now be seen on YouTube’s redesigned video pages. The new design sports a “Statistics and Info” tab that shows recent ratings, honors and sites linking to the video.

There’s also a new tabbed box for the Share, Favorite, Playlists and Flag functionality. The share capabilities have been greatly expanded to include aggregating services and social networks, as well as the capability to post directly to a blog. (Hat tip to TechCrunch.)