Oct 15 (Reuters) - Alphabet-owned YouTube was

down for thousands of users across the United States, Canada,

Australia and the UK, according to Downdetector.

YouTube said in a statement published on its status page

on Wednesday that it is aware of users experiencing issues

watching videos, and added that it is investigating the issue.

It was not immediately clear what caused the issue.

As of 8:05 p.m. ET, 293,240 users have reported issues with

YouTube just in the U.S., per Downdetector, which tracks outages

by collating status reports from a number of sources.

Downdetector's numbers are based on user-submitted reports.

The actual number of affected users may vary.

Google did not immediately respond to a Reuters request for

comment.