Youtube view count question

Ok so after hours of searching and testing I still have inconclusive results on how YouTube count their views .

In youtube watchpage, does the user have to watch a certain % of the video for the view to be counted ? I know some people say 30+ seconds but there are shorter videos which still have views so theres that.

When you embed an external video in a website/blog on autoplay does it count ? Now again I've tried this and results were mixed. Maybe there's a criteria like the user has to scroll down or watch the whole video or something. I'm mentioning this because youlikehits use autoplay embed and views still count. I don't know

I'm pretty sure that embedded videos w/out autoplay work the same as on YouTube watch page or similar at least.

Anyway if any of you could help out with this that be great,

Oh and sometimes I consider buying views from here like the banana garden because prices seem nice but are they real views or bots. Do those views actually work for ranking and getting organic traffic and can they get you banned ? I'm just asking because if there's only so much you can control when you have no idea of what the traffic source actually is.

You could view for a millisecond and you'd still be counted as a view.

In the old days a major ranking factor was view count. Now it has to do with viewer retention. You'd get better rankings with a video that had 1k views and a 65% retention rate than a video with 1 million views that averaged a 5% retention time.

I've always thought that embedded videos doesn't count to get more views.
I think I'm wrong, waiting replies :S

It's called algorithms and YouTube aint going to disclose them. There well be tons of different reasons as to why views are counted. They may even blacklist certain IP blocks. I could upload a video right now and refresh the page 100 times some times i may get 20 views other the full 100. Youtube isn't supposed to be a game of who can get views fast. Ive had videos that have sent 0 views to grow to 5k in 3 days and others i have sent a few thousand get nowhere. I wouldn't bother buying views unless your planning on just blasting views and having it deleted. Try seo with your videos and sharing instead of blasting views at it. Good luck

dr4goncl5ws said:

You could view for a millisecond and you'd still be counted as a view.

In the old days a major ranking factor was view count. Now it has to do with viewer retention. You'd get better rankings with a video that had 1k views and a 65% retention rate than a video with 1 million views that averaged a 5% retention time.

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oh really ? I taught view count is still a major player in this ranking game : P now when you say retention do you mean visitors coming back to my channel after watching one video or what ? . thanks for replying btw I just decided to jump on this bandwagon and shits confusing .

Pepefantas said:

I've always thought that embedded videos doesn't count to get more views.
I think I'm wrong, waiting replies :S

Click to expand...

well yeah if you embed a video without autoplay it should be fine, ads work and everything. with autoplay though. I have no idea what YouTube makes of them. What sucks is that if the visitor actually enjoys the autoplay view but doesn't like or share than apparently its not a view. Or is it ? lol thats one of the reasons why I created this tread

dami3n said:

It's called algorithms and YouTube aint going to disclose them. There well be tons of different reasons as to why views are counted. They may even blacklist certain IP blocks. I could upload a video right now and refresh the page 100 times some times i may get 20 views other the full 100. Youtube isn't supposed to be a game of who can get views fast. Ive had videos that have sent 0 views to grow to 5k in 3 days and others i have sent a few thousand get nowhere. I wouldn't bother buying views unless your planning on just blasting views and having it deleted. Try seo with your videos and sharing instead of blasting views at it. Good luck

Click to expand...

yeah i know the good old fashioned like comment and subscribe with a pinch of back links and shares wohoo : P . I just taught I could inject some cheap views from fiverr or whatever, get that view count up and start a snowball effect till i can retire and walk away . haha . I also wouldnt trust the seller with the actual youtube link , which is where the embed autoplay isssue comes into play. Anyway ur probably right no easy way out i see