YouTube Video Metadata: What Is Public and What Is Not
Published 2026-09-23 · 5 min read · YTDetective
TL;DR
- A public video exposes its title, channel, upload time, length, tags, category and its view, like and comment counts, and a few technical flags.
- Watch time, impressions, click-through rate and revenue are private to the channel owner.
- Some numbers can be hidden by the creator, such as likes, so a missing value is not the same as zero.
- The Metadata Viewer shows this public record in one place, without guessing at anything private.
Before you judge a video by its numbers, it helps to know which numbers exist for you to see. This guide walks through what a public video record contains, using one real example, and what an outsider can never see.
A real example
We looked up the first video ever uploaded to YouTube, "Me at the zoo", through the YouTube Data API on 2026-09-20. Here is what the public record contained.
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Title | Me at the zoo |
| Channel | jawed |
| Published | 2005-04-24 at 03:31:52 UTC |
| Duration | PT19S (19 seconds) |
| Category | Category ID 1 |
| Tags | me at the zoo, jawed karim, first youtube video |
| Views | 434,553,214 |
| Likes | 19,851,236 |
| Comments | 10,627,888 |
| Language | en |
| Captions | true |
Public metadata for one video, read through the YouTube Data API on 2026-09-20
Two details are worth noticing. The duration comes back in a compact machine format, PT19S, which the Metadata Viewer turns into a readable length. And the publish time is in UTC, so the local date on the video page can differ by a day.
What is not public
The record above has no watch time, no impressions and no click-through rate. Those, along with revenue, are shown to the channel owner in YouTube Analytics. YouTube Help (read on 2026-09-23) describes the Revenue tab as showing estimated revenue, RPM and playback-based CPM. None of that is available from outside a channel.
This matters when you read someone else's numbers. A view count alone does not tell you how long people watched. Our Playlist Analyzer says so directly: view counts are not retention data.
Missing does not mean zero
Creators can hide some counts. Our Channel Audit notes that channels that hide their like counts show a lower or missing engagement rate, and it treats that as a limit on the data, not a claim about how engaged the audience is. If the Metadata Viewer shows no like count, the video may simply hide it.
- 01
Paste the video link into the Metadata Viewer
It accepts a public video URL or a video ID and reads the public record.
- 02
Read the upload time in UTC
Convert it to your own time zone before you compare it with anything you saw on screen.
- 03
Treat counts as of the moment you looked
Views, likes and comments change constantly. The table above will already be out of date.
- 04
Do not infer what you cannot see
If you want retention or revenue for a video, the only source is its owner.
Three ways to use it
Age gives you a rate. The example video was published on 2005-04-24 and had 434,553,214 views when we looked on 2026-09-20. That is about 7,819 days, or roughly 55,600 views a day on average. The average hides how the views actually arrived, but it puts a very old video and a new one on the same scale.
Counts give you ratios. 19,851,236 likes on 434,553,214 views is about 4.6 likes per 100 views. Ratios like this are only comparable between videos that both show their likes.
Duration tells you what is possible. A video of 19 seconds cannot carry chapters, because YouTube Help asks for at least three timestamps and a minimum chapter length of 10 seconds.
Confidence note
The example values were read through the YouTube Data API on 2026-09-20 and change over time. The list of private measures reflects what YouTube Help describes for YouTube Analytics. We have not tried to list every field the API can return, only the ones that matter for reading a video's public record.
FAQ
Can I see how long people watched a video?
Not from outside. Watch time and retention are part of YouTube Analytics, which only the channel owner can see.
Why does the publish time differ from what I see on YouTube?
The API returns it in UTC. The page shows it in your local time, so the date can differ by a day.
Why are the tags empty on some videos?
Tags are optional, and YouTube Help says they play a minimal role in discovery, so many creators leave them out.
Are these numbers exact?
They are what YouTube reports at the moment of the lookup. Counts change, and creators can hide some of them.
Related reading
Sources
- Google for Developers: Videos: list (YouTube Data API) · read on 2026-09-23
- YouTube Help: Understand ad revenue analytics · read on 2026-09-23
- YouTube Help: Video Chapters · read on 2026-09-23