1. You will see that there is a YouTube watermark ion the bottom right of the video. This is actually a link to YouTube and if pressed will take your site visitor to the YouTube website. Therefore you lose the contact.

2. YouTube now allows ads to appear on videos so your site is being used to promote other offers. This also can move visitors off your site.

3. The button on the bottom left allows the visitor to view other "related" videos which may not be yours. They also show at the end of the video. These videos can be those of a competitor or worse, a deviant. Have a look at this one from a strong supporter of YouTube.

http://www.montehuebsch.com/htm/default.asp at the time of publishing this site also showed a video called "Ignorant local political dons KKK costume" and also links to videos purporting to show video of Steve Irwin's actual death.

4. Many corporate firewalls ban any access to YouTube because it encourages browsing and that is counter productive. In some companies watching anything on YouTube is grounds or instant dismissal.

Youtube now have a service called 'Channels' where you can set a number of videos ionto your own closed channel and not expose yourself so much to the varagies spoken about above. This is a much better option than a single video sitting in amongst the hordes of other non related and dangerous videos on the YouTube public site but still does not protect you from allowing visitors to leave your site. To have a look at my Let's Do It Channel click here.

As you can see clicking on the video title or the view comments will take you through to YouTube which of course runs the risk of losing the visitor and exposing them to your competition.

In the absence of an alternative method of delivering your video material to clients I would reccommend YouTube but since there are viable and safer alternatives available I suggest you look at those.

One reason people like YouTube is because it gives additional SEO advantage and that is true. However it is not necessary to embed the YouTube link into your site (and thus expose yourself to the above disadvantages) Set up a YouTube channel y all means but consider hostiing your own videos on your own site as wll.

Simply click the back button to return to this article.

Any related videos that appear are only yours and will not allow any departure away from your site.

Of course you can also host the videos on your Let's Do It! site and not have to worry about the stability and security of the source site at all.