If you’re a marketer, you want as many views as possible on your YouTube videos. Views are a great indicator of the popularity of your video and how engaging it is. Having more viewers on your videos helps you increase brand awareness, grow your following, and ultimately drive traffic to your website or sales page.
The more views you have on a video, the higher your video will rank in YouTube search results and recommendations. But how do you know if your viewers are truly watching your videos? How do you avoid getting stung by a fake view count?
A viewer must physically click the play button to start your video for it to count as a view. In addition, a video must be watched for at least 30 non-consecutive seconds to be considered a valid view. YouTube also has other metrics in place to help determine whether a video is real or fake, such as average view duration.
Why Does YouTube Freeze the View Count?
Once a video reaches 300 views, YouTube freezes the count to verify that these views are legitimate and not coming from bots. This allows the platform to delete any fraudulent views as they’re identified and protects the integrity of their ranking system.
YouTube’s algorithm can also detect and block fake accounts by tracking user activity, such as clicking the play button or commenting on a video. This enables YouTube to keep a clean and trustworthy list of videos that deserve to be at the top of their search rankings. youtube views