The way that YouTube counts views is actually quite unique – and YouTube has changed it several times over the years.
As creators, we all want our videos to have as many views as possible. But can you increase the view count on your videos by watching them yourself?
This is an interesting question. In this article, I’ll cover what YouTube considers to be a view, and whether or not you can boost your view count by watching your own videos. We’ll also talk about how YouTube factors views into their algorithm, and what you should actually be focusing on to grow your channel.
Let’s get to it!
Does Watching Your Own YouTube Video Count As A View?
Yes and no.
YouTube has a lot of data on what is considered natural behavior, and what is considered unnatural behavior. They go to great lengths to maintain the integrity of their platform, and ensure that people are not cheating their system.
So, YouTube has come up with a solution.
YouTube will consider your first view of the video to be a view, and add it to your video’s overall view count.
However, if you watch the video over and over again, they will stop counting it as a view, and it will not be reflected in your total number of views. Additionally, your watch time will also not be counted towards monetization either.
This is quite different from the past, where tricks could be used to get a large number of views quickly!
In just a moment, we’ll talk more about these tricks in the past, and how they were used to artificially boost your view count.
Can You Just Refresh The Page To Increase Your Views On YouTube?
One of the most basic strategies to boost your view count on YouTube used to be refreshing your videos!
However, this strategy no longer works.
In the early days of YouTube, it was common to spam-refresh the page over and over again, watching the view counter go up each time that you did it.
In fact, there was even software available that could refresh the page automatically every few seconds, so you didn’t even have to be at the computer to make your views go up this way!
Of course, those days are long gone.
It’s very easy for YouTube to see when it’s the same person viewing the video over and over again. They consider this action to be spam, and automatically filter out any views that were generated by that user.
This is true regardless of who is doing it – so, it won’t work even if you get a friend to do it, or try refreshing the page from another YouTube account.
What If You Get A Bunch Of Other People To View The Video As Well?
Let’s say that you didn’t view your own video repeatedly, or even ask a friend to. Is there any other trick that you can use to boost your view count?
In the past, there was a service that worked a little bit like this – you would visit a website, which would automatically show you someone’s video. You would let the video play in the background while you did other things.
Then, after a certain amount of time had passed, the video would auto-refresh to a new video instead.
Doing this would give you credits, that you could then use to throw your own videos in the pool, having other people watch them at their computers as well.
For better or worse, these services no longer work.
YouTube’s spam-detection system is smart enough to recognize that it’s unnatural for a video to suddenly start getting so many views, from people who would not normally be interested in that topic.
Likewise, they can detect when you’re watching a bunch of random videos, on random topics that you’ve never shown interest in before.
Therefore, even if these views appear temporarily on your video’s page, they will later get filtered out and reversed.
Currently, there are no tricks that can get you fake views like this anymore – and chances are that you probably wouldn’t want them anyway.
How Views Factor Into YouTube’s Algorithm (And What Actually Matters)
In the early days of YouTube, views were a ranking signal.
The more views your video had, the higher it would appear in search, and the more likely it was to appear in the suggested videos list.
However, this is no longer the case.
While users may be more likely to click on a video that has a lot of views, it isn’t really used as a ranking factor anymore.
Instead, YouTube cares about videos that achieve its primary objective – keeping people on the platform.
YouTube loves videos that not only have high retention, but keep people consuming more content on YouTube. Ultimately, it is these videos that get rewarded in YouTube’s algorithm.
Trying to get fake views does the exact opposite of this – it hurts all of these important metrics, and likely ensures that the only views your video gets will be the ones that you cheated for.
So, even if fake view services worked, they’re hardly worth using.
Conclusion
The days of cheating YouTube are long gone.
YouTube’s exceptionally good at detecting fake views, and filtering them out automatically. So, even if your own views were counted temporarily, they will later be removed from your metrics.
Engagement and retention is what matters most, so focus on getting these and YouTube will push your video out to more people on their own.
To your success,
– James McAllister
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