// THE VERGE — MOBILE & WEB
YouTube is changing how it counts views to give the numbers a boost
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By tracking views from the instant a video starts to play, YouTube’s new counter works more like TikTok, X, and Instagram.
By tracking views from the instant a video starts to play, YouTube’s new counter works more like TikTok, X, and Instagram.
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YouTube will soon count a view as soon as a video starts to play, lining up with the system used by Instagram, TikTok, and its Shorts videos. The update will go into effect on August 24th, “which means creators will likely see their total view counts increase faster moving forward,” the platform says.
Instagram and TikTok similarly add a view to a video when it starts to play or replay, while X counts a view when a user watches a video for at least two seconds. YouTube applied Instagram and TikTok’s view-counting method to Shorts last year.
YouTube says it’s going to keep its original view-counting method under an “engaged views” metric in its Analytics dashboard. As my colleague David Pierce notes, it’s not entirely clear how YouTube counted views before this, but “it’s generally accepted wisdom that you have to watch 30 seconds of a standard YouTube video for it to count.”