When it comes to watching videos on YouTube, it is important to understand what this viewing actually means. The YouTube service counts the views depending on whether the viewer initiated the video viewing or not.

Watching YouTube videos may seem like a simple matter, but actually figuring out what counts as watching on YouTube can be difficult. If your goal is to evaluate the success of your content on YouTube by the number of views, or if you want to see how far you have progressed in the process of monetizing your channel and gaining popularity on YouTube, these rules will help you understand how the platform actually counts views.

And yet, how do they do it?

YouTube wants to make sure that video views come from real people. That's why YouTube viewing is counted only if the following two criteria are met:

• The user intentionally initiates viewing the video.


• The user watches it on the platform for at least 30 seconds.


• If you miss a video, but the total time spent watching it exceeds 30 seconds, the viewing will also be counted. If you watch for less than 30 seconds, it probably won't happen.

Repeat views are counted up to a certain point (for example, someone watches a video several times a day), but they cease to count from a certain number that YouTube did not specify. Experts believe that after 4 or 5 views in one day, YouTube stops adding new views to the number of video views. So don't make the mistake of thinking that you can just get your friends or team members to watch your videos over and over again, because you just won't be able to do it.

But what about videos that are shorter than 30 seconds? How are views of such videos counted? Experts are not sure how many videos a user needs to watch in order for it to be counted as viewing. Keep in mind that the 30-second viewing limit only matters because it is a factor that helps YouTube decide whether to monetize videos, and videos shorter than 30 seconds cannot be monetized.

Browse for yourself, bots don't work

Video views should be realistic and logical on YouTube, that is why it's so important to only buy legit youtube views. This means that the account cannot randomly switch from video to video and view each one for 30 seconds. This means that the views are not created by the same user or are not recommended in the recommendation system. After that, YouTube will assume that this observer is a bot, and will stop counting his views.