The TikTok section in the left menu gathers everything gas knows about your TikTok profile: how your follower count grows, how many views and likes your videos bring in, and how each individual video performs. This article walks you through its pages and explains what each number means.
The section has five pages: Overview, Followers, Likes, Views and Videos. From Videos you can click through to the detail of a specific video.
Before you start
- The TikTok section is always visible in the menu, but it will only contain data once someone from your team links a TikTok profile to the customer account. The procedure is described in the article Linking your TikTok account.
- Every role, including Viewer, may view the data. Nothing in this article requires the Administrator role.
- Check that you have switched to the customer account the profile is linked to. The switch is in the top bar.
Data is downloaded from TikTok automatically, roughly once an hour. The Refresh button in the top right reloads what is stored in gas, but it does not trigger a new download from TikTok.
Overview
The Overview page is the section's dashboard. It consists of tiles (widgets) that show a single metric either as a number or as a graph. By default there are four:
- Followers as a number,
- Posts as a number,
- Video views as a graph,
- Likes as a graph.
Above the tiles there is a row of controls, the same one you will find on the pages of individual metrics:
- Profile selection. If you have a single profile linked, only its name is shown. With several profiles it is a drop-down list, and switching applies to the whole page.
- Graph type: Columns, Line, Area, Bars.
- Period breakdown: Day, Week, Month, Quarter, Year. It determines how long the intervals are into which the period in the graph is divided.
- Period: Last 7 days, Last 14 days, Last 28 days, Last 90 days, This year, Last week and others, or a custom range.
- Refresh, which reloads the data.
You can adjust the layout of the tiles. Under the three-dot button in the top right you will find Add widget (you pick a metric, a profile and either Value or Graph), Edit layout (tiles can be moved, removed and duplicated; you end the editing with Finish editing) and Reset to default layout. The setting applies only to you and only to this customer account.
Followers, Likes and Views
Each of these three pages covers one metric and looks the same: three summary cards with a graph underneath. (The page named Views in the menu has the longer title Video views in its header. It is the same page.)
- Total is the value for the selected period.
- Short-term trend compares the selected period with an equally long period immediately before it.
- Long-term trend compares the selected period with the same period a year ago.
- Graph shows the course day by day, or by weeks or months depending on the chosen period breakdown.
What each number means:
- Followers is the number of accounts that follow your profile. The Total card shows the state on the last day of the selected period, while the graph shows the state day by day. A declining curve means more people unfollowed than joined.
- Likes are the likes the profile's videos gained during the selected period, added up across all videos. So it is not the total number of likes the profile has collected since it was created, but the increase over the period.
- Views is the number of views the profile's videos gained during the selected period. Views of older videos count too, not just of those you published during the period.
- Posts (a tile on the Overview) is the number of videos published in the selected period.
On the Overview and on the metric pages, rolling periods end with yesterday. Today is not included, because it has not been fully measured yet. This does not apply to the Videos page, where filtering is by publication date, so today's videos do appear.
Videos
The Videos page is a table of all videos published in the selected period. In the profile selection here you can tick several profiles at once and see their videos together. Click a column header to sort the table, for example click Creation time to start with the newest videos.
Table columns:
| Column | What it contains |
|---|---|
| Name | The video name as TikTok provides it. Clicking it opens the video detail; the arrow icon next to the name, Open in network, opens the video directly on TikTok. |
| Description | The text describing the video on TikTok. The column is hidden by default; you turn it on under the Columns button. |
| Campaigns | Campaigns whose tag (hashtag) appears in the video text. |
| Destination | For destination management companies only: destinations recognised from the hashtag in the video text. |
| Profile | The profile the video comes from. Useful when you have several profiles selected. |
| Duration | The length of the video in seconds. |
| Video views | The total number of views of the video since it was published. |
| Likes | The total number of likes of the video. |
| Shares | How many times the video was shared. |
| Comments | The number of comments on the video. |
| Creation time | The date and time the video was published on TikTok. |
Right at the bottom there is a separate row with totals for the listed videos.
The numbers in this table are totals since the video was published, not values for the selected period. The period only decides which videos are listed. That is why the total in the Video views column does not match the number on the Views page, which counts only what was gained during the period.
Video detail
Clicking a video name opens its detail. The header shows the beginning of the video text and, on the right, the Print button, which prepares the page for printing or saving as a PDF.
Video preview is in the top left. It plays directly from TikTok, so a consent prompt with a Show preview button appears in its place first. You give consent once, after that previews load by themselves. The preview is not included in printouts.
The information panel next to the preview contains Profile (a link to the profile on TikTok), Published, Content type, Length, then campaign and destination tags if any were found in the video text, the video text itself and the View on social network button. If the video was deleted from TikTok, a red Deleted line is added with the date on which gas recorded its disappearance.
Metric cards under the panel show the totals since publication: Video views, Likes, Comments and Shares.
Engagement rate is a card that compares interactions with views: the sum of likes, comments and shares divided by the number of views. The bars below the percentage show how much each of the three types contributes to the interactions. The higher the percentage, the larger the share of viewers who reacted to the video in some way.
Metric timeline is the graph below the cards. It shows the daily increase, that is, how many views, likes, comments and shares the video gained on each day. By default the Video views and Likes series are switched on; you switch Comments and Shares on by clicking in the graph legend.
Daily metric development is the table at the end of the page. For each day there is a pair of values: the increase for that day (Impressions, Likes, Comments, Shares) and the total as of that day (Total impressions, Total likes, Total comments, Total shares). It is the quickest way to find out when a video took off.
The graph and the Engagement rate card are not rendered on a phone. Instead of the graph, gas shows a note asking you to open the page in a browser on a computer.
Where the numbers come from and why older history is missing
This is the most important thing to know about TikTok data, because it explains most of the surprises.
The interface gas takes the numbers from always sends only the current total state, not the development day by day. For a profile it delivers today's follower count and the total number of likes and videos; for a video, the total number of views, likes, comments and shares since it was published. None of these numbers is broken down by day, and TikTok does not even offer a way to request older daily values retroactively.
That is why gas measures repeatedly and calculates the daily development from the difference between two measurements. If a video has 12,000 views on Wednesday and 12,800 on Thursday, an increase of 800 is recorded for Thursday.
Several things follow from this:
- The time series starts on the day the profile was linked. No measurement exists before that day, so there is nothing to calculate a difference from.
- History cannot be filled in retroactively. Neither for a profile nor for a video. The sooner you link the profile, the longer the series you will have.
- You will still find older videos in the list. They are shown with the totals they have today. All they lack is the day-by-day breakdown for the time before the profile was linked.
- The first day of the graph is usually empty. The first measurement has no previous one to compare with, so the daily increase starts on the second day.
What TikTok does not provide
The range of data is narrower than for Facebook and Instagram, and that is because of what TikTok itself releases. These are not features left out of gas:
- Audience demographics (age, gender, country, cities) are not in TikTok's interface at all. You can only see these numbers in the analytics inside the TikTok app itself.
- Analytical breakdowns that TikTok shows only in its own app (view development by day, traffic sources, watch time) are not passed on. That is why gas calculates the daily development itself, see the previous section.
- Public videos only. Videos set as private or friends-only do not reach gas.
- TikTok advertising cannot be linked in gas. The TikTok section covers the profile and its videos.
Common problems
The TikTok section is empty and says No profile
No TikTok profile is linked to the customer account. gas will offer to take you to the settings, where you can set the link up. The procedure is described in the article Linking your TikTok account. If you believe the profile is linked, check in the top bar that you are in the right customer account.
The profile is visible in the selection but cannot be selected
The item is greyed out because the customer account's plan has used up its number of profiles for this network, or the subscription has expired. The customer account administrator can change this, or write to us through the contact form.
The graphs are empty up to the day we linked the profile
That is expected behaviour. gas calculates the daily development from the difference between measurements, so before the first measurement no daily data exists and it cannot be filled in retroactively. This is explained in detail in the section Where the numbers come from.
Today's date cannot be selected in the period
On the Overview and on the metric pages, rolling periods end with yesterday, because today has not been fully measured yet. On the Videos page today counts normally.
A video I know exists is not in the table
The Videos table lists only videos published in the selected period. Extend the period, for example to This year, or set a custom range. If you still cannot find the video, check whether it is public on TikTok and whether you have the right profile selected.
There is nothing in the Name column
TikTok sends the video name as a separate field and many videos do not have it filled in. In that case the video text is in the Description column, which you turn on under the Columns button. You can still get to the video detail; the row remains clickable.
The totals in the videos table do not match the number on the Views page
These are two different things. The Videos table shows the totals since each video was published, whereas the Views page counts how many views were gained in the selected period. Both numbers are correct, they just answer different questions.
The numbers differ from what the TikTok app shows
Small differences are normal. gas has the value from the last measurement, whereas TikTok in its app shows the state at this very second. The difference should disappear within a few hours. Please report a large and persistent difference to us through the contact form.
The follower count in the graph is falling
The graph shows the real state day by day. A declining curve means that on that day more people unfollowed than joined. It is not a measurement error.
A video's daily graph starts only on the second day
The first measurement has no previous value to calculate an increase from. The first day is therefore missing from the graph and the series starts on the following day.
The video preview is not showing
The preview plays directly from TikTok, so gas loads it only after your consent. Click Show preview. You give consent only once and it also applies to previews from other networks. The video preview is not included in the printed output; what gets printed is the information, the metric cards, the graph and the table.
A red Deleted label is shown for a video
The video is no longer on TikTok, either you deleted it or TikTok removed it. gas keeps the numbers it collected even after deletion, so the history remains available. The preview and the link to TikTok will no longer work, though.
Data stopped some time ago and no new data is coming in
Most often the link has stopped being valid: access expired, someone removed gas in the TikTok settings, or the profile was linked by a colleague who no longer works at the company. Look in Settings → Customer account → Linked accounts, where the profile has its own row with its status and with the Who links the account column. A paused link is restored with the Reconnect button; this is described in detail in the article Linking your TikTok account.
On a phone the video graph, the Engagement rate card and the tile editing are missing
These parts are not rendered on a small screen, because they would be illegible. Instead of the graph, gas shows a note asking you to open the page in a browser on a computer. On a phone, tables are shown as cards stacked one below another.
I want audience demographics like we have for Facebook
TikTok does not pass this data on at all, so gas has no source for it. You will find the age, gender and country of your audience only in the analytics inside the TikTok app itself.