Google will be retiring the practice of stopping a newly uploaded YouTube video’s view count at 301+, whenever a new video reaches the 300 view mark. The view count on YouTube is a reflection of the video’s popularity (with the PSY Gangnam Style video is almost at 2.4 billion views). The increasingly popular video sharing platform started the 301+ count on videos because in some cases, the videos were being viewed by both robots and humans, and the organic views weren’t being clearly represented.
301+ COUNTER WAS USED TO VERIFY ORGANIC VIDEO VIEWS
The 301+ counter was YouTube’s was of dealing with this issue. After a new video reached 300 views, the videos were stuck on the 301+ mark until YouTube verified the views to confirm whether or not they were organic. The views from bots would be removed while the unique human user views would be recorded. The results would usually take hours before the YouTube team could actually verify the views.
NEW ALGORITHM WILL REMOVE THE 301+ MARKER
With a new algorithm for the company, the viewers of videos will be automatically filtered as real or bots. This generated count will be more authentic and will be more accurately displayed in comparison to the previous 301+ marker.
The YouTube Creators tweeted through the official Twitter account that YouTube would stop the practice. They even released a helpful infographic showing how they froze the view counts when a video passed 300 views. It also showed how users could see the real-time view counts for the videos. This means that now legitimate views will be counted as soon as the come in, and will be showing a fair reflection of the genuine view counts.
VIEWS FROM BOTS WILL BE ADDED AFTER VERIFICATION FROM YOUTUBE
The views that are suspecting to be coming in from bots will still be added later after they were are officially cleared by the YouTube team. In the past few years, the 301+ mark had become a way of showing that the video was new. Now this will become another thing to put on the YouTube history books.
