Every creator works towards creating YouTube content, uploading it, and getting more views. The higher your views, the more likely YouTube will recommend the video to more viewers, creating more engagement.
Unfortunately, you could upload a YouTube video, and after it gains views, you wake up one day and notice the views are going down. What causes this?
A YouTube video can lose views after it audits the video to check if it has authentic views. YouTube knows that some creators try to use bots or gain fake views to push their videos. Hence, it performs an audit to check the state of a video’s views. If a video contains suspicious and fake views, it will immediately get removed, leaving only the authentic ones.
This post will discuss the issue in detail to help you understand what affects your videos and why they have few views.
Why Did My YouTube Views Go Down?
YouTube views are crucial in determining a video’s engagement and recommending it to other viewers. When you upload your video, you target a given audience and hope that your video is well-optimized to gain many views within a short time.
Some YouTube videos quickly go viral and reach many people. However, YouTube views can go down. You could have your video reaching peak views today, but after a few days, you will notice a decline in this number. What causes this?
Although you may think it’s an issue with YouTube systems, the truth is that YouTube audits each video once it starts gaining views. YouTube does so to ensure it detects and removes any fake views.
Such views include those involving a view bot. If the views don’t match the criteria of appearing as authentic views, YouTube flags them as fake and removes them.
So, if your video has lost views, it means YouTube did an audit and removed any fake views. You are likely using a bot to increase your views or paid viewers who failed to make their views count as organic ones. Thus, you ended up having YouTube strip off your videos.
How Does YouTube Flag Fake Views
YouTube uses given criteria to determine which views are organic and authentic. There are different signs YouTube looks for during the audit to flag fake views. These signs include the following:
Views Lasting Less Than 10s
According to YouTube, when it audits your views and realizes there are those where the viewers only opened the video and exited before 10 seconds were over, that’s a fake view. Such views are mainly from fake accounts aiming to boost a video’s views.
An authentic view is about 30 seconds long. If most of your views don’t reach 10 seconds long, they are likely fake and will get removed.
Suspicious Browsers
Most of us use recent browsers that track cookies and are easily recognized when you access a site. However, if most of your views are based on an older browser version, such as Internet Explorer, that creates a red flag, and your views will easily get removed.
Same IP Address
Anyone can watch the same video repeatedly. However, it’s a red flag when many of your views originate from the same IP address. YouTube audits such cases in suspicions of using a view bot to increase the bot. Any suspicious views will be removed, reducing your video’s views.
You can avoid YouTube reducing your views by not trying to boost your video with fake views. Otherwise, YouTube will audit your views and easily flag any fake views.
Conclusion
If you notice your YouTube views declining, it implies YouTube audited them, found fake views, and removed them.
YouTube doesn’t tolerate any fake views and will remove them, affecting the earlier views count your videos had received. We’ve explained it all in today’s post.
