Why Do YouTube Views Freeze at 301?

Today we’re going to talk about a very common question asked about YouTube, the views always seem to stop at 301. Here’s our answer to why YouTube video views freeze at 301.

It’s a pretty long winded explanation and starts with what a view is on YouTube. YouTube likes giving you the most accurate view counts on YouTube, to do that they have algorithms that check views to see if they are “real” by making sure people are really wanting to watch and view the video and are not being mislead.

When you upload a video to YouTube, it is broadcasted to nodes all around the world. These nodes host the videos and deliver them to people within that region, so people in Asia aren’t viewing a video from the US. Each of these nodes also individually count views of the video from that node and then send a log to the central counting system that reports the video views on the page.

You’ll see real-time views up to 301 views, after that YouTube has decided that it needs to be checked to see if it’s a “real” view and puts your views into a queue. From 301 views on, YouTube will update the video views every half a day to every day. Sometimes you’ll see video views stop at 320 or 305 instead of 301. That’s due to the popularity of the video where these nodes will rack up a lot of views before sending it to the central viewing system. When it gets there the counting system will not take a partial file of the views but will take the whole log file before stopping. That’s why you end up with numbers over 301 at times.

The video embedded explains more, plus an explanation about the liking system.