YouTube has begun testing a redesigned analytics experience in YouTube Studio, renaming the Analytics tab to “Insights” and adding AI-generated insight cards for a limited group of creators, according to a July 16 update posted by YouTube staff to the platform’s official Community forum.

According to the update, the test restructures navigation, grouping related metrics and charts under the new Insights tab. A simplified date-range selector appears on the overview page, though custom date ranges remain available through “Advanced Mode,” and a new back button lets creators move between subpages.

For creators eligible for Ask Studio, YouTube’s conversational analytics assistant, the update adds four AI-generated cards: Channel Summary, Content Patterns, Audience Loyalty, and Video Summary. YouTube is also changing the Trends tab into a new destination called “Research,” positioned as a tool to help creators plan their next video, and retiring the desktop “saved keywords” feature as part of the shift. Creators with saved keywords have three months to download them as a CSV or access them through Studio’s mobile app.

Mario Joos, a YouTube strategist who has worked with creators including MrBeast, the Stokes Twins, and Alan’s Universe, detailed the Research tab’s function in a post on X. According to Joos, the tab surfaces videos from other channels alongside subscriber counts, view counts, video age, and an “outlier multiplier,” a score that appears to measure how a video performed against the rest of its channel’s output based on its first seven days. Filters let creators sort by view count, outlier score, and video age, and a “watched by my viewers” filter isolates outlier data specific to a creator’s own audience.

Source: @MarioJoos

“After years of creators using third-party paid tools to learn what their audience may like, YouTube finally decided to create its own outlier tool,” Joos wrote, adding that the “watched by my viewers” filter is what separates it from existing third-party analytics products. Joos said he remains uncertain how YouTube calculates the outlier score, but called the update one of the more consequential changes the platform has made for creators in some time. He noted the tool has not yet reached all markets.

The rollout currently covers a small group of creators, and YouTube has not said when or whether the test will expand more broadly.

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