Views are a critical metric when it comes to growing a brand’s reputation on YouTube and expanding their profile as an Internet star. However, if you’re looking to generate more views, you need to be sure they are legitimate. Sadly, there are many ways to manipulate YouTube video views. This can lead to your view count looking different on the video watch page and in analytics. What is a view on YouTube? YouTube is careful about how it tally views due to several ways users try to deceive the system and artificially increase their video’s view count. For this reason, YouTube has several different methods in place to weed out fake views and only counts legitimate ones. For example, a view is considered a valid one if the video was watched for at least 30 seconds and not interrupted in any way. This means that if someone is watching multiple videos in a row and not stopping between them, YouTube may flag them as a bot and their views will not be counted. Another way that YouTube verifies a view is by factoring in replays. Replays are important for video creators because they suggest that people enjoy a video and want to watch it again. However, YouTube is careful about this and will only factor in a certain number of replays before the view counter halts. This is because replays can be spammy if done repeatedly and excessively. What counts as a view on YouTube? Views are important for video creators on YouTube because they can help drive traffic to a video and potentially lead to sales or conversions. Views are also important for businesses who participate in YouTube’s Partner Program, as they determine how much a business can earn in advertising revenue. A view on YouTube is defined as a viewer-initiated play that lasts for at least 30 seconds. This can be done by clicking on a video or pressing the play button on a computer or mobile device. Replays and repeated plays count as views, too. However, YouTube does not count views that are spammed, such as those from bots or duplicate accounts. Can you refresh a video to get more views? Yes, but only 4-5 replays are counted in 24 hours. Refreshing a video repeatedly to artificially inflate the count will get you flagged by YouTube as spam. How do I know if a view on YouTube is valid? YouTube has very specific criteria that must be met in order for a video to be considered a valid view. For example, a view must be watched for at least 30 seconds in order to count. This is to ensure that videos are being watched by real viewers and not by bots. Additionally, a view must be unique in order to count. This means that a person cannot replay the same video multiple times in an attempt to artificially inflate views. This is also why YouTube will sometimes freeze the video’s view count if it exceeds 300, 301, or more. If you have a large number of fake views on your YouTube video, it will be difficult to gain organic engagement from your audience and will hurt the performance of your videos in the algorithm. Therefore, it is important to understand the difference between fake and legitimate views on YouTube in order to improve your marketing strategy. How do I know if a view on YouTube is fake? If you are looking to purchase YouTube views, you will need to make sure that the ones you are purchasing are genuine. There are many third-party businesses that will sell you fake views that will make your videos look more popular than they really are. This is against YouTube’s terms of service and can lead to penalties or even the termination of your channel. Authentic views will not only increase your video’s view count, but they will also provide you with accurate analytics that you can use to improve your content strategy. Fake views will not only distort these analytics, but they will also prevent your video from earning monetization, which can have a negative impact on your business. YouTube uses a variety of methods to detect fake views, including monitoring accounts and IP addresses, watching for suspicious activity, and reviewing the location from which a video is being viewed. You can also spot fake views by evaluating the view duration of a video – genuine viewers will tend to watch videos for longer periods of time.