What are Fake Views?
In today’s social media generation, where everyone depends on the Internet for their day-to-day tasks, fake views are a real issue. Fake views are the views that are generated from certain accounts that are not interested in your video; they are there and just generate some counterfeit views. The event won’t watch your video because they have no profit in doing so.
YouTube is one of the most popular platforms in the modern world. It’s the second most popular search engine. Almost 500 hours of video content is uploaded on YouTube every single minute. And because of YouTube monetization, people also profit from the engagement of their videos. So it has become very typical that people are always looking for ways to generate more views on their videos.
Hence fake views come into the scenario, which is sometimes caused by providing money to certain websites or using bots and scripts. While as real views are authentically generated by the people who are genuinely interested in your videos or through various marketing campaigns. More views also lead to video trending, more engagement with the audience, and more collaboration with the brands, thus emerging as a successful brand.
The ease with which fake views are accessible to people makes YouTube the platform with the fakest views. As YouTube is a free video-sharing website, as soon as people share their videos, they try various methods to make their videos viral, like purchasing views in large amounts from spamming websites.
YT Fake Views
Can YouTube spot fake views?
To tackle situations like this, there are specific techniques used on YouTube:
- Analyzing the traffic on the videos and where it’s coming from. The YouTube analytics team has an especially curated section known as The Traffic Source section, which provides the report of all the traffic generated by your videos. This report also consists of how the viewers found your video, whether it was from YouTube or external sources. This analysis is based on the engagement on the channel on which the video was posted, their social media followers, and the marketing campaigns. The traffic sources can be a referral, search, or direct; after analyzing the whole traffic scenario, if the team founds that it’s coming from obscure sources, the views generated are considered fake.
- Comparing the watch hours and the views also play a significant role in detecting fake views. In the case of many YouTube videos, they will have high views but fewer watch hours compared to the views. As the watch hours also play a significant factor in monetizing the channel, the creators must have at least 240,000 minutes before applying for the paid partnership for YouTube. There are fake views if the video has high views and fewer watch hours.
- Having massive views on your channel and not enormous engagement on your channel, like subscribers, comments, likes, and dislikes, also signifies fake views. A YouTube video with thousands of likes and yet only a few comments, likes, or dislikes raises specific questions. So analyzing such differences also helps YouTube to detect fake views.
YouTube is trying everything from its side to tackle issues like these by using several algorithms. Fake views are a big issue for YouTube as they constantly compete with traditional TV to generate ad revenue. As the views are fake, thus they degrade the value of ads, disrupt the relations between YouTube and its advertisers, and affect the business. Not only do the fake views disrupt the business, but also the algorithms of YouTube. This makes it difficult for them to make recommendations to their users. YouTube has set standards for itself, and fake views come in the way of providing high-quality services to its users.
Thus YouTube also takes strict actions against the people who use foul methods to generate views, as they can lead to the channel’s shutdown. It also goes against YouTube’s TOS(Terms of Service). The fake views can also degrade the authenticity of the channel, thus reducing the chances of a real audience. Credibility loss for your original work can also be there. From their side, either YouTube will remove the content if foul play is found, or they will send you the mail to let you know about the situation. For the first time, you will likely get a warning for violating the Community guidelines; otherwise, there will be a strike against the channel. If there are three strikes in 90 days for a respective channel, the channel gets terminated.