> ## Documentation Index
> Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://docs.mentionlab.io/llms.txt
> Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.

# Social — YouTube

> See which YouTube channels and videos AI models cite when answering your queries

AI platforms cite YouTube constantly, and a video citation behaves nothing like an article citation:
it points at a creator, not a publisher. **Social → YouTube** breaks that slice of your citations out
on its own, so you can see which channels the models trust in your category.

## How the data is collected

Whenever a tracked AI response cites a URL, MentionLab checks whether it is a YouTube link
(`/watch?v=`, `/shorts/`, `/embed/`, or a `youtu.be` short link). Matching videos are resolved
through the YouTube Data API, and a metadata snapshot of the video and its channel is stored.

<Note>
  Metadata is snapshotted at most once per day. Titles, view counts, subscriber counts and channel
  countries reflect the **most recent snapshot**, not the moment the citation happened.
</Note>

## Headline numbers

| Card                  | What it counts                                     |
| --------------------- | -------------------------------------------------- |
| **Videos cited**      | Distinct videos cited in the current scope         |
| **Citations**         | Distinct AI responses that cited any YouTube video |
| **Citations / video** | Citations divided by videos cited                  |
| **Unique channels**   | Distinct channels whose videos were cited          |
| **Channel countries** | Distinct home countries of those channels          |

<Note>
  **Channel countries** excludes channels with no country set, while the **By Country** table
  includes them as an "Unknown" row — so the table can have one more row than this card suggests.
</Note>

## YouTube Channel Share

A donut of citation share by channel — top 10 plus **Other**.

## Channel share over time

The proportion of responses citing each of the top five channels, bucketed **Daily** / **Weekly** /
**Monthly**.

## By Country

Grouped by the **cited channel's home country**:

| Column                                  | Meaning                                                                   |
| --------------------------------------- | ------------------------------------------------------------------------- |
| **Citations**                           | Distinct AI responses citing any video from a channel in this country     |
| **Citation Share**                      | This country's share of YouTube-video citations in scope                  |
| **Citation Rate**                       | How often this country's channels appear across all AI responses in scope |
| **Channels** / **Videos** / **Queries** | Distinct channels, videos and queries involved                            |

Click a row for the country sheet: top channels and top videos from that market.

<Warning>
  **Citation Share can sum to more than 100%** down these tables. One AI response often cites several
  videos, from several channels, in several countries — and it counts once for each. Every individual
  row is still ≤ 100%.
</Warning>

<Note>
  Two different countries are in play. The **Countries** filter in the filter bar scopes by the
  market your *query* targeted. The **By Country** table groups by the *channel's* home country.
  They're independent, and combining them is often the interesting move — e.g. which foreign channels
  dominate answers in your home market.
</Note>

## All Channels

Every channel whose videos were cited, with citation rate, citation share, subscriber count and
country. Click a row for the channel sheet listing its cited videos.

<Note>
  **Citations** and **Cited videos** are hidden by default here — turn them on with the
  column-visibility button.
</Note>

## All Videos

Every cited video, with its thumbnail, upload date, view/like/comment counts, channel, citation rate
and citation share. Search by title to check whether a specific video was ever cited.

Expand a row for **Citing queries** — which of your queries produced responses citing that video, and
how many times each.

<Note>
  The **Queries** column is hidden by default on this table.
</Note>

## Reading the results

* A channel with high citation share and no relationship to you is an outreach target.
* Videos cited across many different queries are category-defining content — worth understanding, and
  worth having an answer to.
* The **By Country** split tells you whether the models lean on local creators or on a few global
  channels, which changes how you'd approach it entirely.

<Note>
  **View as** has no effect on this page — citations belong to a response, not a brand.
</Note>