Attracting views to your YouTube videos is a tedious process. You often need to do a lot of marketing and promotions just to gain a few hundred views. That is why seeing your view count drop can be a nerve-wracking experience. Let’s take a look at some of the reasons why you may be losing views and learn some effective remedies.
The truth behind lost YouTube views
The main reasons why you lose views is because of YouTube’s own auditing process. Unlike before when the site only starts to audit when a video goes past the 300 views mark, auditing now begins immediately once your video starts gaining views.
During the initial review of registered views, YouTube takes a hard look at the following factors:
- Duration: The site checks whether each view is over 10 seconds long. Fake views typically just load the player and don’t play the entire video.
- IP address: YouTube takes note of whether many views are coming from a single IP address. It then decides if that is a result of abnormal user behavior.
- User-agent strings: Checking the devices where the views originated from works similarly to looking at the IP address.
- Referral URL: Views coming from the same link can be either natural (like when people visit from your blog) or unnatural (like when the video is embedded in a video advertisement).
These tests ensure that all the views checked by YouTube are 99% real, with all the initial views guaranteed to come from actual people.
After the initial tests, YouTube does additional passes on subsequent views. These extra audits are less harsh than the initial ones, but they test more specific video elements. These are continuously done on your content with the purpose of filtering out the “bad” views while registering the real ones.
Losses caused by drops in subscribers
Another reason why you might lose views is due to a drop in subscribers. YouTube regularly cleans out its accounts list, taking down dead accounts or those that have been inactive for a long period of time. The views associated with these types of accounts eventually get delisted as part of the audit process.
YouTube also actively goes after bot accounts used to inflate the number of views and subscribers. Since these are prohibited under the site’s rules, the actions against them can have a significant impact on view counts. Not only will you lose views; YouTube may also impose certain punishments, like temporarily pausing of your views counter.
Other reasons YouTube views disappear
It is also worth noting that YouTube routinely updates its algorithm. In such cases, some of the counted views will get delisted if they do not comply with the new rules. The site will typically notify you beforehand of such changes.
There are also rare instances when YouTube experiences an error in data reporting. One such incident happened in 2017 when YouTube experienced a glitch that caused its system to inflate total channel view counts.
These errors are repaired within a few days, but the sudden drop in view numbers after the fix had surprised many users.
Rebounding from a view count drop
The best way to know if your channel is experiencing a significant drop in views is by looking at and understanding your YouTube analytics. This will give you an accurate picture of the number of views you are losing real-time.
The analytics will also help you determine the possible cause of lost views. For example, you might notice a drop after the first few seconds, indicating that your audience may be losing interest while watching your videos. It could indicate that your targeted keywords are reaching the wrong people.
Recovering from a drop in views follows the same process of how you gained them in the first place. Some strategies you can employ for getting more views again are:
- Optimizing your videos: Refine elements like the title and description of your video to let people know what the video is all about. This makes it easier for them to discover your video.
- Improving your audience retention: Try different ways to improve your video quality, like adjusting the length, the actual content, or your background/location to get people to watch more.
- Re-promote your videos: Double down on the promotional efforts you do for the videos that have lost views in order to get them back into public consciousness.
- Share on new communities: Look out for new groups within your niche where you might not have yet shared your content, then introduce your videos to them.
These tactics will take some time to work to bring back lost views, so you need to be patient in doing them.
Losing YouTube views is definitely not a fun experience for any video creator. Once you understand the reasons behind it, you will be able to formulate a way to recover quickly. Try out the tips and strategies we showed, and you will definitely come back stronger in the video listings.