Views are one of the most important metrics for YouTube videos. A video with a lot of views is seen as more popular and likely worth watching. However, how do you get those coveted views? In this article, we will cover what counts as a youtube view, how they are counted, and how to increase your youtube video views.
A youtube view is defined as a video play that has been initiated by a human user and watched for at least 30 non-consecutive seconds. This can be a view on any device including mobile phones, desktop computers, and embedded videos on websites. This view must also be a new watch and not a replay.
To avoid spam, YouTube has a system that carefully monitors views. Once a video reaches 300 views, YouTube temporarily freezes the view count to ensure that those are genuine plays from real humans and not bots. This process can take 24 to 48 hours and may affect a video’s number of views in the meantime. YouTube also deletes views that look suspicious – like when people refresh a video or autoplay it on a website to skew the count.
YouTube does allow repeat views to count towards total views but only up to a certain point (some believe around 4 or 5). This is because the same viewer watching a video multiple times is likely not watching it on purpose to skew the count but rather just for access to other content they are interested in. youtube views