YouTube videos’ view counter famously gets stuck at “301+” views, but that beautifully ambiguous state is going away forever. YouTube announced this morning that it’s doing away with 301+ and will start to keep video views more up to date. It’s long frozen the counter after 301 so that it can take some time to filter out any fake views from robots, but doing so has meant keeping the counter really imprecise while thousands of legitimate views come in.
YouTube videos will no longer get stuck at 301+ views
is The Verge’s executive editor. He has covered tech, policy, and online creators for over a decade.
YouTube says that it’ll now continue to add new views as they happen, as long as it’s sure that they’re genuine; views that YouTube suspects as coming from bots will be added later if they’re cleared. This should help video creators get a better perception of how their video is doing early on, but mostly, it’ll mean viewers saying goodbye to knowing that a video is brand new because it’s stuck at 301+.
We're saying goodbye to 301+ and hello to more up-to-date video views. pic.twitter.com/33OQuOvxcs
— YouTube Creators (@YTCreators) August 5, 2015 Follow topics and authors from this story to see more like this in your personalized homepage feed and to receive email updates.
