YouTube makes viewing number of videos more accurate

YouTube has made a change to the way it collects and displays viewer statistics about videos. Previously, YouTube videos often hung at 301+ views for a long time, after which a major update followed after a few hours.

The YouTube team explains exactly what the change means in an infographic posted on Twitter. Until now, with newly uploaded YouTube videos, the number indicating how many times the video had been viewed has stuck at 301+ for a long time. At this limit, YouTube stopped updating the data because it first wanted to verify that the views were from real people, not bots. That verification took some time, causing the number to skyrocket after a few hours.

YouTube has changed its approach and now does the verification in real time. When real users view a video, it is immediately registered, while in cases where the software suspects that it is a bot, further analysis takes place before increasing the number of views shown.