Best Websites to Track Popular and Viral Videos Online

Online marketers have realized the power of online video: when done right, it can do wonders in terms of viral effect, engagement and brand awareness.

But how is it “done right”? How to craft a successful viral video? I know only one way to learn anything efficiently: by example. It’s what I am good at: watch what others are doing, make conclusions and do better.

Besides that obvious educational value, the resources listed in this post can also help you track hot trends to better craft your online marketing campaign!

So enjoy: how do you track video trends online?

1. First-Hand: Most Popular on Youtube, Viddler, etc

Every major video sharing site has its own trending video section. The 7 coolest ones are:

1. Viddler: Most Popular Today: The list can be sorted by “Most Viewed”, “Most Favorited” and “Most Discussed”
2. YouTube Charts: apart from the ability to set the period of time (popular today / this week / this month / all time), it also lets you sort the list by multiple criteria: “Most discussed”, “Most liked”, “Most Subscribed”, “Most viewed HD videos”, “Most Favorited” and, obviously “Most Viewed”



3. Yahoo Popular Today – Yahoo has also “Popular by Category” section
4. Most Popular Videos on Photobucket (sadly, you can’t set the time frame here);
5. Funny or Die: Most Viewed: You can filter videos by channel and sort by “Most Buzz” (not sure what this one includes), “Most Viewed”, “Most Favorited”, “Highest Rated”:



6. Metacafe – most popular: can be sorted by views and ratings and filtered by time frame: popular this week o this month
7. DailyMotion: Most Viewed Videos: the videos can be filtered by channel, time frame (today, this month, this week), and by video type (featured videos, HD videos, official content, creative content):

2. Viral Video Aggregators

Aggregators use multiple sources (like those listed above) to present you with daily (and sometimes hourly) collections of popular videos at a number of platforms.

Here are a few examples:

1. Viral Video Chart: the tool monitors “most contagious” videos on Youtube, Facebook, Twitter and Blogosphere. For each video you can click though to “stats” section where you can see the number of Tweets (as long as the list of most influential ones), Facebook shares and blog posts.

2. PoPScreen: the home page features videos which are going to become popular videos “now” (you can switch to “today”, “7 days”, “30 days”). The popularity is determined by “Popscore” which includes “hundreds” of undisclosed metrics including “influencer” score (i.e. powerful online media resources and magazines that reflect the public interest to the current topic). The site thus focuses on delivering videos that are making headlines and the stories behind them.

PopScreen measures online videos from over 10,000 sources, including YouTube, Blip.tv, Vimeo and DailyMotion as well as content networks like FunnyOrDie and Cracked.

3. Zoofs is a great way to discover YouTube videos that people are talking about on Twitter. Zocial.tv is a similar one that monitors Twitter and Facebook.

3. Regular Viral Video round-ups

Some people love browsing video sharing sites and find best videos on his own, others prefer to go through ready-made manually-compiled round-ups. I for one can do both the ways. The two video round-ups I tend to monitor:

• Viral Video Roundups by Reelseo;
• Viral Videos (with some focus on movies and TV) by Movie Viral

Which tools do you use to track and watch popular videos online? Please share them all!

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