If increasing your video’s view count is one of your digital marketing goals, you need to understand the nitty-gritty details of how YouTube counts views. YouTube is strict about making sure that all views are genuine.
This helps prevent videos from being deceived by bots or users who are trying to artificially increase the watch count.
What Counts As A View?
There are a few requirements that have to be met for a view to count on YouTube. It needs to be a valid watch that is at least 30 seconds long and it must come from an account that meets the YouTube guidelines. It cannot be fake, spam, or autoplay and it should not be a replay of the same video.
YouTube also considers the quality of a video and its thumbnail. The thumbnail is a key factor that determines whether a viewer clicks on the video to watch it. It should be attractive and clear to understand.
Embedded videos that automatically play do not count as views and neither do views from video ads on other websites. Also, views from accounts that have been flagged for spamming video comments will not count. It is important to follow YouTube’s guidelines to keep your account safe and secure. The platform is strict when it comes to fraudulent activity.
How YouTube Counts Views
While it might seem like a mystery how YouTube counts views, there is actually a pretty simple explanation. The video platform has a view count algorithm that is very meticulous and smart. YouTube defines a view as a viewer-initiated intended play that lasts for at least 30 non-consecutive seconds. This means that if someone skips through a long video or watches it on autoplay it will not count as a view.
It is also worth noting that repeat views do count, but only a certain number per user account and IP address. This is to prevent people trying to artificially inflate their view count.
Also, YouTube will remove and exclude any videos that appear to be malware – software designed to harm a computer, server or network. This is an extra step to protect users and the integrity of the video platform.
Exclusions From Views
It’s very rare for a video to go viral overnight on YouTube. Unless you’re filming your autotuned cat or making a political joke, it’s more likely that you’ll build up your audience over time by publishing regular content. This could mean vlogs, playing popular video games or even just posting funny videos that your audience enjoys.
You can get granular with which videos you want to monetize by setting up topic exclusions. This way you can prevent your ad from showing on videos that are classified under certain topics like politics, video games or religion.
YouTube has been demonetizing videos that it deems advertiser unfriendly since 2012. The platform now notifies creators when their content is flagged, so you can always contest it if you think that YouTube made a mistake. However, the biggest factor in a video’s success on YouTube is how many times you get watched. And that’s where ad views come in.
Bot Views
Using bots to increase YouTube views is not only against the platform’s terms of service but it can actually decrease your video’s engagement metrics. Any view count that is suspected to be from a bot will be frozen or decreased until YouTube can verify whether or not those views are legitimate.
This process can take a while, but if you use bot views for too long, your video will eventually start to get penalized and you may not be able to recover it. Bots can be detected based on the number of accounts they are associated with, if they have random proxy server IP addresses or if they are watching videos in an abnormal order.
There are many different services that offer to sell you views for your YouTube video. Some of them are real while others are fake. View bots are essentially software programs that connect to the YouTube system and watch your videos for you. The program will typically use multiple accounts and random proxy server IP addresses to make it look more authentic.