YouTube Views?

[Thos003]

Does anyone have any guesses on how YouTube views are counted?

Are views unique or can a single individual view a clip multiple times?

I have also heard rumor say that AUTOPLAY views from your profile page do not count.

[AdoptionHelp]

In my experience multiple views do count. I'm not sure about the autoplay, but I can't see a good reason Youtube wouldn't count them.

[Thos003]

So if I were to create a contest for YouTube then someone could inflate their views?

[Mr.Rangen]

A "Unique View" defined:

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/youtube/thread?tid=36c600b76eed8740&hl=en

It's old, but probably still pretty accurate. It's a heated debate with all signs pointing to an inaccurate form of measurement. Most of the blog posts you read about this stemmed from that discussion I do believe. Such as, http://www.atlantaanalytics.com/practicing-web-analytics/how-does-youtube-video-view-count-work/ and http://www.hotforwords.com/2009/07/22/view-counts-on-youtube/ - Note the deeper analyzing happening at 308 views.

External or Embedded Videos Counting Towards View Count:

http://www.google.com/support/forum/p/youtube/thread?tid=26f5093fbce9f85a&hl=en

Simply put, Yes, they certainly do.. the legit ones count anyways!

[MarieHaynes]

I've seen people advertise software that inflates your view count.  This one advertised 500 new views per day.  It's likely something done with proxies.

[Thos003]

I guess if somebody wants it bad enough they will pay for it. Funny, but can't imagine too many buyers are coming out of those 500 views a day.

[Thos003]

Thanks Brent for the reading material.