Viewers in common analytics

Which Channels Share Viewers With Yours on Twitch?

Ever wondered exactly who else your audience loves watching when they are not tuned into your stream? One simple glance inside your Creator Dashboard can hand you that answer on a silver platter. The Channels with Viewers in Common panel quietly ranks the top streamers whose audiences overlap most with yours. It has quietly become one of the most practical tools Twitch gives creators, and it is still right there in 2026, delivering fresh insights every time you check it.

You will find it by heading to your Creator Dashboard, clicking Analytics on the left sidebar, and then selecting the Channel section. The panel usually shows your top five overlaps, ranked by shared audience size. Twitch blurs the names in any public screenshots for privacy, but when you are logged in the real channels appear. It is simple, powerful, and surprisingly revealing once you start using it regularly.

How to Find It Yourself

Log in, go straight to Analytics, choose Channel, and scroll down. That is it. The data refreshes based on recent viewer activity, so checking it after bigger streams gives you the clearest picture. It is quick, and the insights start paying off the moment you begin acting on them.

Turning Overlap Into Real Collaboration Opportunities

Treat this list like your personal networking map. When your viewers already enjoy another streamer, you have a built in foundation for something great. Send a friendly message to those channels. Mention a specific stream you liked or a shared game you both play. Suggest a co stream, a raid swap, or even a simple joint game night. Many creators have turned these overlaps into regular collabs that boost everyone involved.

You can also add overlapping channels to your auto host list so your community keeps discovering similar content even when you are offline. In a crowded platform, these smart connections often create faster and more natural growth than chasing random shoutouts ever could.

Reading the Room and Spotting Trouble Early

There is another side to this data that many experienced streamers rely on quietly. If your chat suddenly fills with oddly coordinated comments or unexplained negativity, check the overlap list. It can point you straight to the source. In my own case, it clearly showed a competitive mindset streamer who was directing their audience toward my channel with negativity. Knowing that helped me respond calmly instead of wondering why certain chatter felt off.

This awareness lets you protect your community vibe. You can reinforce your own positive rules or simply focus on the fans who are there for the right reasons.

Unlocking Deeper Audience Insights

Beyond collabs and drama detection, the panel offers a window into your viewers tastes that you might not have considered. Take a look at the categories those overlapping channels stream. Are they heavy into the same games as you, or do they branch into something fresh? This can inspire new content ideas. Maybe your audience loves variety streams on certain days or enjoys watching a different genre entirely when they are not with you. Use that to plan themed nights or test new games your people are already watching elsewhere.

Smarter Raid and Promotion Strategies

Use the data to choose raid targets with confidence. Raiding a channel with high overlap means your viewers are more likely to stick around and enjoy the new stream. It creates smoother transitions and higher retention. On the flip side, you can see which bigger channels share your audience and start building relationships that might lead to them raiding you back. Small consistent raids to the right people can compound into real growth over time.

Building a Stronger Network and Community Events

Think bigger than one off collabs. Group several overlapping channels together for community events like watch parties, charity streams, or multiplayer tournaments. Reach out to a few at once and propose something fun that benefits everyone. You can also join or create Discord groups with these streamers to share tips and cross promote. Streamers who treat this data as a relationship builder end up with stronger support systems and more loyal combined audiences.

Refining Your Schedule and Content Calendar

Pay attention to when those overlapping audiences are most active. If you notice your viewers are watching certain channels at specific times, you can adjust your own schedule to avoid conflicts or fill gaps. Maybe stream right after a popular overlapping channel ends to catch the flow of viewers looking for more. Or test different days and see how the overlap list shifts. This kind of data driven scheduling often leads to steadier viewer numbers week after week.

Monitoring Trends and Staying Ahead

Watch how the list changes over months. If new channels start appearing because your audience is branching into fresh games or trends, you can jump on those early. It is like having a quiet heads up on what your community is interested in next. You can experiment with those titles or styles before they become mainstream in your niche and keep your content feeling current and exciting.

Practical Steps to Get Started Right Away

Make checking this panel a weekly habit after your bigger streams. Here are a few easy ways to turn the data into action:

• Watch a couple streams from your top overlaps first so any outreach feels genuine and personal.
• Start small with a raid or quick shoutout before suggesting full collabs.
• Keep messages warm and specific. Mention something you actually enjoy about their content.
• Track how your overlaps change after you try new things so you can see what is working.

At the end of the day, this one panel is not just about numbers. It is about understanding the people who choose to spend their time with you and finding smart ways to grow alongside them. Next time you open the dashboard, take that extra minute to review the list. You might discover your next great collaboration, spot a trend early, or finally understand exactly where certain chat energy is coming from. Either way, it is information you can put to good use immediately.

Huge amount of follower bots are copying your stream channel name

Huge numbers of fake follower accounts have been created using channel names.

So overnight some entity has created thousands of Twitch accounts using streamers channel's name. Here is a screenshot of what it looks for one of my channels on Twitch.

The format for the accounts appears to follow a pattern, its basically a streamers channel plus a random combination of one to three digits or letters. Some are also using pictures, avatars from established streamers in the profile.


Please be aware its not the channel owners doing it, if you get messages, alerts, /raids or whatever from channels that are following this format dont take it against the streamer.

Who exactly knows what the entity is planning on doing with all the fake accounts. Hopefully Twitch will investigate and remove these accounts from the system.

How to check if your channel was effected is by using the search function on the Twitch website.

Put in your stream name in the search bar and then click more on the channel section. Here is a screenshot to help you see where to click on to show more.

Again, be careful when clicking on things inside chat rooms, this entity maybe will try to post links with similar channel name to get viewers to click on them. It maybe a smart move to banned all accounts you find during search to prevent something like that from happening inside your chats.

Update - 8/19/2018

Checked to see if any of the new accounts have been removed for 'gamingwithdaopa' search and I still see a total of 30 or so fake accounts.  We are speculating the entity that is doing this account generation is trying to obtain 'free subs' from Twitch's new gifting option. I believe if they get a free sub, it may whitelist them inside that channel which will then allow them to post fishing links or other problematic links inside chat rooms.

It maybe time to prevent all URLs from being displayed in your chat unless its been reviewed by a moderator or channel owner. When reviewing links, pay attention to misspellings for domain names, and get a handle on URL shortener that will cloak links.

600,000+ Tune in for the start of Battle for Azeroth

At 6 PM Est time, the start of "World of Warcraft's - Battle for Azeroth" newest expansion launched and here are some screenshots of the numbers and top streamers on twitch!


Let start with overall viewers, it topped around 610,000 here is a screenshot from the Twitch directory.

Click to enlarge picture.

With any large AAA Title, tons of streamers who usually do not play or stream world of warcraft all jumped in for the expansion launch. Here is a look at the top most streamers:

Click to enlarge screenshot

Top  streamers for launch include the following:

• sodapoppin - 84,750 viewers
• Asmongold - 60,350 viewers
• LIRIK - 31,170 viewers
• ZeratoR - 29,728 viewers
• TimTheTatman - 26,652 viewers
• Reckful - 23,506 viewers
• shroud - 21,415 viewers
• AtheneLIVE - 16,513 viewers
• Towelliee - 14,535 viewers
• ungespielt - 7,612 vierwers

It is always amazing to see the viewership numbers for game launches like this Twitch. You can also view how much of a viewership hit some of these non wow streamers take by switching over to it for the launch window. As of 7:30 PM, overall viewership numbers have gone down to around 495,991 Viewers. I guess the core viewers are now busy playing the game and stopped watching streams.

Powerful Embedding Promotion

How embedding can be used to promote big events for your Twitch channel.

This past weekend Twitch had a major Overwatch League event and I noticed some of the various ways they used embedding advertising to promote the channel. For those of you who are not familiar with what embedding means its basically taking the channel video stream player and showing it externally outside of Twitch. A good example of embedding can be seen here on this blog, on the sidebar I embed my Twitch channel in the advertising section. You can also include chat as its own embed if you wanted to show that off.

So lets start with reddit, on numerous subreddits during the event they had a advertisement going which showed the stream as a embed. Here is a screenshot:


This would show up as a reddit promoted post and as users went to the subreddits that had this advert going, they would be able to watch the stream inside of reddit.

Next up and most likely one of the best embedding options Twitch has in their portfolio is gamepedia. Here is a screenshot of the OverwatchLeague channel being embedding across the majority of the gamepedia wiki network.


Even thou the event is over with that embed is still occurring which is extremely helpful when looking at how much channel views generation its generally doing. Lets take a quick look at some basic stats for this channel.


The event took place on the 27th and 28th of July, on the screenshot I've added 2 black dots. Now look at what happened on Sunday, over 2 million views on a offline stream. And continued on to Monday another 1.2 million views mostly generated by Twitch's embedding of the channel on gamepedia. How interesting to see a big bulk of the views coming from embedding promotions outside of Twitch.


One more place that I've seen in the past Twitch used to promote a special event was on imdb. IMDB is owned by Amazon, its a movie-actor type of a database lookup website. I forgot to check to see if they had any promotional embed for the Overwatchleague channel.  But here is how they used it during a Call of Duty Black Ops announcement event.



This was on the frontpage, top fold of the layout showing the channel as a embed.

Most likely they did additional promotion on facebook, twitter and other places but I didn't dig that deep. On facebook they do not allow 3rd party embedding, but on Twitter you can embed your stream.

Overall this shows how powerful embedding advertisement can be to promote your channel on Twitch. Check out my "How to get twitch viewers", guide for ways you can start taking advantage of embedding and other various tips that I have learned over the years of streaming.

Any questions or comments fill free to post below in the comment section.

Update 8/15/2018 - Noticed another embedded stream on r/twitch promoting Call of Duty, unlucky for them having a MATURE Filter enabled prevented the stream from autoplaying.

Here is a screenshot:

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Additional examples of embedding, date of screenshots taken on 4/27/2021.

Alienware Arena embedding

Gaming.Lenovo.com embedding

MSN Esports Hub embedding / aggrogator

Phishing scam streams

How to Avoid Getting Caught in a Phishing Scam on Twitch Live Streams

Picture this. You are scrolling through Twitch, spot a streamer playing your favorite game with a couple thousand viewers, and a quick glance at their profile promises free in game items just for checking a forum thread. You click, type in your login details, and within seconds your account is cleaned out. It sounds like a nightmare, but it is a real trap that catches gamers every single week.

Phishing scams on Twitch have been around for years, and they are not going away. Scammers create fake streams, compromised channels, or cleverly disguised links in profiles, chat, and panels to steal usernames, passwords, game accounts, and virtual goods. No platform is completely immune, but the good news is you can protect yourself with a few simple habits and a healthy dose of skepticism.

One of the most common examples still circulating involves Old School RuneScape fans. A viewer comes across a channel with around 2,000 viewers showing gameplay. The streamers profile panel mentions they are quitting the game and giving away items via a linked forum thread. The link looks identical to the official RuneScape forums. The viewer logs in to claim the free stuff and boom. Their account gets compromised. Gold, rare items, everything vanishes, often while the player is hit with a distraction like a DDoS attempt to buy the scammers more time.

That story is not ancient history. Similar tactics, fake giveaway streams, compromised channels, or cleverly disguised links continue to fool people in 2025 and 2026. Scammers love popular games like RuneScape, Fortnite, Valorant, and League of Legends because players have invested real money and time into their accounts.

Why These Scams Work So Well

Twitch moves fast. You are chatting, watching, and multitasking. Scammers exploit that excitement with urgency and familiarity. Pages that look exactly like the real thing make it easy to fall for. They also use short URLs, tiny spelling changes in web addresses, and even hijacked legitimate channels to make everything feel trustworthy.

Smart Ways to Stay Safe Every Time You Stream

• Never click random links not in chat, whispers, profile panels, banners, or about sections. Even if the streamer seems legit, pause and think.
• Hover first, click later. Mouse over every URL. If it is a shortened link, treat it as suspicious. Legitimate streamers rarely need them.
• Double check the destination. If you trust the streamer, open the official game website or Twitch page in a new tab yourself instead of following their link. Tiny changes like runescɑpe.com using a Cyrillic a or twltch.tv are classic tricks.
• Remember: if it sounds too good to be true, it is. Free rare items, double XP weekends that do not exist, or quit and giveaway offers that ask for your login details are almost always scams.
• Enable two factor authentication everywhere. Turn on 2FA for your Twitch account, your game accounts, email, and any linked services. It is the single biggest barrier against account takeovers.
• Watch for modern red flags. High viewer counts on low follower channels, pre recorded footage with no live interaction, urgent verify now messages, or requests for personal info are all warning signs.

Other Common Twitch Phishing Tactics You Will See in 2026

Beyond profile panel links, scammers love sending whispers and private messages with fake giveaway codes. They also impersonate Twitch staff with emails about account suspension or copyright strikes that lead to credential harvesting sites. Some create clone channels that rebroadcast popular streamers and slip phishing links into the chat. Even fake donation alerts and charity drives have been weaponized.

Twitch continues to improve its fraud detection tools, but the best defense is still you. Report suspicious channels and messages directly through the platform, and never hesitate to reach out to official support using bookmarks instead of emailed links.

What to Do If You Think You Have Been Scammed

Act fast. Change your password immediately from a different device. Enable 2FA if it is not already on. Check your game account for unauthorized activity and contact the games official support. Report the stream or message on Twitch. If money or items were stolen, document everything for potential recovery through the games customer service team.

Staying safe on Twitch does not mean you have to stop enjoying live streams. It just means staying one step ahead of the scammers. Take a breath before you click, verify everything yourself, and keep that too good to be true radar switched on.

Have you run into a phishing attempt on Twitch lately? Drop your experience or any new tricks you have spotted in the comments below. The more we share, the safer the community stays.

Embedding clips on twitter

Guide on how to embed twitch clips onto twitter.

So you want to put a twitch clip on twitter as a embed? Here is a simple way to do it by downloading the clip and reuploading it into twitter.  This method can also apply for facebook pages. So if you want to upload clips onto both twitter and facebook, substitute step 3 with posting on facebook, its very similar.


Step 1.

Go to the clips section on the dashboard and select clips of my channel.

Here is a URL shortcut ( https://dashboard.twitch.tv/u/STREAMNAME/content/clips/channel )  to this section, just make sure to insert your channel name in the STREAMNAME spot.

Step 2.

Click on the download button next to the clip you want to save. Make sure to save the video clip to a location you can easily find such as your desktop.



Step 3.

Now that you have your video clip downloaded, you can use it to upload into twitter, which will create it as a embed. Go to twitter, then to tweet creation window and click on 'Add photos or video' button, select the video clip file and upload it. Write out a tweet description with your hash tags and tweet it out.

Update - Twitch now has the correct twitter card information for clips, so it automatically embeds and links back to your twitch channel. You can use the clips URL and just put that into a tweet and it should work. So you will have to decide either on downloading and re-uploading or just using the share to tweet link.

I recommended to keep downloading your clips and then uploading them into twitter.  Using twitter's video system is better for growing and discovery opportunities on that platform. Social media platforms like facebook and twitter generally rank content better if its on their website, not embeds or links to other sites.

how to get twitch viewers

Ultimate 2026 Guide to Getting More Viewers on Twitch: The Complete Hub for Streamers

If you are hitting that Go Live button week after week and watching the viewer count hover near zero, you are not alone. Twitch in 2026 is bigger, more competitive, and more algorithm driven than ever, but the streamers who are actually growing are not waiting for the platform to hand them an audience. They are building one deliberately using a mix of timeless fundamentals, smart syndication, and the powerful short form discovery engines that now rule the game.

This page is your central hub. Everything you need is right here: proven strategies, direct links to in depth guides, updated 2026 advice, and fresh angles that turn casual viewers into loyal community members. We will cover the classic methods that still work beautifully alongside the modern tactics that are driving real growth right now.

The Timeless Basics of Viewership Building

Before chasing any shiny new tactic, nail the fundamentals. A consistent schedule that you can actually stick to, clear branding, great audio and lighting, and treating every single viewer like they matter. These basics still separate the streamers who plateau from the ones who steadily climb.

Read the full Basics to Viewership Building guide here — it breaks down the generic (but incredibly effective) methods that form the foundation of every successful channel.

The Luck Factor: Right Game, Right Time, Right Move

Sometimes growth really does feel like luck, but you can stack the odds heavily in your favor. Streaming during game launches, major updates, or seasonal events can give you a temporary surge. Choosing categories that are not oversaturated yet and streaming when your audience is actually online still pays off big.

Dive deep into the Luck Factor guide for details on game day launches, strategic timing, and even some rule breaking approaches that still work when done right.

Embedding and Syndication: One of the Most Powerful Growth Tools

Embedding your live stream on your own website, blog, or other platforms remains a smart way to capture viewers who might never find you on Twitch alone. The official embed code is still fully supported in 2026. Just remember to use the required parent parameter for your domain to avoid playback issues.

Here is exactly how to set it up on popular platforms:

• Embedding on WordPress
• Embedding on Blogger / Blogspot
• Advanced Embed Code Options — all the parameters and settings you need
• Embedding on X (formerly Twitter) — still powerful when paired with the right hashtags, though short video posts often drive even more traffic now

Full Embedding and Syndication Guide

Crowd Sourcing and Community Driven Growth

Turning your viewers into active promoters is pure gold. When your community feels ownership, they will share your stream, raid with you, and bring friends along naturally.

Read the complete Crowd Sourcing guide for practical ways to get your audience contributing and growing the channel with you.

Multi Platform Presence: Your 2026 Discovery Engine

Twitch itself is no longer the main place new viewers discover you. The real growth happens off platform, then funnels back to your live streams.

• Short Form Video (The number 1 Growth Driver in 2026): Clip your best moments and post vertically on TikTok, YouTube Shorts, and Instagram Reels. One viral clip can send dozens of new viewers straight to your next stream. Focus on strong hooks in the first two seconds, captions, and clear calls to action that point back to your live schedule.
• Reddit: Become a genuine contributor in game specific or streaming subreddits. Follow the rules, add value first, then share your stream when it fits naturally. Huge traffic potential when done right.
• YouTube: Post highlights, edited compilations, and full VODs. Full guide on growing your YouTube channel as a streamer.
• Discord: Your off stream home base. Run watch parties, giveaways, and casual chats to keep the community alive between broadcasts.
• Facebook / Meta: Fan page for clips, events, and updates. Still effective for certain niches.
• Steam Groups: Great for game specific communities.
• Free Game Keys and Sponsors: Learn how to sign up for free keys through legitimate platforms — perfect for giveaways and fresh content.

Networking, Collaborations and Raids

Connecting with streamers around your size can accelerate growth faster than almost anything else. Joint streams, mutual raids, and joint events introduce you to audiences who already love your style of content. In 2026 the Discovery Bridge strategy using short form to pull people in then converting them with strong on stream engagement is what separates growing channels from stuck ones.

What No Longer Works (Save Your Time)

Some older tactics have been retired. The automatic Gamepedia wiki promotion that used to autoplay streams is long gone (Gamepedia is no longer part of Twitch or Amazon and stopped the embeds years ago). Focus your energy on what is working today instead of chasing outdated methods.

• Gamepedia guide (discontinued) — with full update notes from 2019 onward.
• Related older posts on top influencers and free traffic are archived for reference only.

Final Thoughts and Your Next Steps

Building a loyal Twitch audience in 2026 is absolutely possible. It just requires a smart system instead of pure luck. Start with the basics, pick one or two detailed guides from this hub to implement this week, and build your short form content pipeline immediately. Track your analytics, stay consistent, and treat your community like the friends they are becoming.

The viewers are out there. Make great content, make it easy to find you, and give them a reason to stay. Before long you will look up during a stream and realize the chat is moving too fast to read every message, and that is one of the best feelings in streaming.

Bookmark this hub, come back often, and use the linked guides as your deeper dives. You have got everything you need right here to start growing today.