I think I've been botted?

[WolfWraith]

In less than a few hours I went from 96-106 subs, and checked today I'm sitting at 107, for a small channel like mine this is abnormal. I checked out some of the subs that showed up in the email (which was 7) and some of them seem legit, others don't even show me in their sub box. I left it overnight because I thought things would work themselves out. Which it stopped at 107 so I didn't see TOO much of an issue there.

To make things worse though, just now I noticed 1 of my videos, where I was actually had it advertised via AdWords, the legit way, has hit 6000+ views. From what I'm aware of YouTube removes dead subs if they're fake but what do I do about the views? I'm p****d off because I've been paying via AdWords and I don't want to start a new channel or remove the, that's $15 gone. Thank god the video isn't monetised too, I think that would be instant strike?

This is the video:
You can see the stats don't ad up at all. Now I highly doubt that even through AdWords that this video would go "viral" and from what I'm aware here is that YouTube can remove the views but I remember 1 guy saying he lost all the views. Which I've paid for via AdWords so would I get a refund?

Also is there a way to find out who's doing it?

 

[Le Fancy Narwhal]

Hmmmm, interesting question.... Idk what's going on.. and I know nothing to answer your questions. Sorry, and good luck, ol' chap!

 

[WolfWraith]

Hmmmm, interesting question.... Idk what's going on.. and I know nothing to answer your questions. Sorry, and good luck, ol' chap!

This isn't good :/ I was meant to do a Rust preview today but don't feel like it now. I mean I could wait for analytics to update and show if the results are real or not but like I said, I have doubts this vid would hit that much in the timeframe it did. The sub count is rising a little bit still >.> I couldn't careless if I lost the views as long as it wasn't the views through AdWords since it's what I paid Google for.

 

[ConnersCraft]

What does it say is the main traffic source for that video? Also, are the subscribers subscribing on specific videos or on the channel page? You can check all of this in the analytics. Some subscribers will not come in via email, because they have their subscriptions hidden. This seems to be about half of channels. The number will go up, but they do not send the email to hide the name. (You can choose to do this with your channel in the settings).

 

[Crown]

I don't think you have necessarily been botted. Have confidence in your content! You are playing a really popular game. I see it has already been shared 3 times after just 400 views and that is just people sharing it via the YT share service so there could be more people sharing it than that. Those are pretty good sharing stats and is a sign of good content. Keep us updated when the analytics updates, but I think you'll be fine

 

[WolfWraith]

What does it say is the main traffic source for that video? Also, are the subscribers subscribing on specific videos or on the channel page? You can check all of this in the analytics. Some subscribers will not come in via email, because they have their subscriptions hidden. This seems to be about half of channels. The number will go up, but they do not send the email to hide the name. (You can choose to do this with your channel in the settings).

Yeah I'm aware of hiding subscriptions, it could be the same person might have changed some of their accounts or whatever system they use to mimic that so it looked varied. It's killing me waiting for analytics to update properly.
Traffic sources for the video last 30 days, it's only 3 weeks old:

Subscribers last 30 days:

I don't think you have necessarily been botted. Have confidence in your content! You are playing a really popular game. I see it has already been shared 3 times after just 400 views and that is just people sharing it via the YT share service so there could be more people sharing it than that. Those are pretty good sharing stats and is a sign of good content. Keep us updated when the analytics updates, but I think you'll be fine

I did have confidence in the playthrough and felt it deserved more views, hence why I made that trailer which I was fairly happy with and confident would get views, but it wasn't budging as much so I tried to promote it as much as I could and decided to go through AdWords as a test. Mind you I've started a 2nd campaign following some guys (I forgot his name) tutorial. But I have to be realistic. That video doesn't have the potential to go viral due to the nature/type of video that it is, so to wake up the next morning and gain 5500 more views is really odd. Not to mention that of those 3 shares, either 2-3 of them could be my own, I did share it around on Google+ communities, small 1s, I think tumblr where I have pretty much no followers, twitter where I have like 15-20 followers which also auto shares to my FB Fan page that again only has around 20 people and I also shared it on StumbleUpon, I think, god knows where those videos end up. Also got to factor in, 6600 views and not a single like, dislike or comment. I'd say after around 1000 views you'd expect 1 dislike or like and maybe a comment or 2. And YouTube says we're responsible for our views, they didn't exactly give me any options to prevent botting, the idiots.

 

[ConnersCraft]

I'd say after around 1000 views you'd expect 1 dislike or like and maybe a comment or 2. And YouTube says we're responsible for our views, they didn't exactly give me any options to prevent botting, the idiots.

You should have a rating after 50 views at least and a comment in the first 100. I think this may be a bot. You will know when you can see what countries it was viewed in, and the traffic sources. Just wait for it to update.

 

[WolfWraith]

You should have a rating after 50 views at least and a comment in the first 100. I think this may be a bot. You will know when you can see what countries it was viewed in, and the traffic sources. Just wait for it to update.

Okay. Well to be fair, a large amount of the views did come from youtube adverts, which means they can't click like from what I'm aware of. But yeah, I do find it odd there's no ratings and comments yet for the amount of views it's displaying. I'll wait for an update, but it really sucks. I don't want to lose the vid or the channel cause of some idiot either trying to ruin me or trying to help me, I don't care if they're trying to help, botting is botting, it's wrong and that's common sense -.-

 

[ConnersCraft]

Okay. Well to be fair, a large amount of the views did come from youtube adverts, which means they can't click like from what I'm aware of. But yeah, I do find it odd there's no ratings and comments yet for the amount of views it's displaying. I'll wait for an update, but it really sucks. I don't want to lose the vid or the channel cause of some idiot either trying to ruin me or trying to help me, I don't care if they're trying to help, botting is botting, it's wrong and that's common sense -.-

I doubt you will lose the channel, because the botting rules are not enforced that much. Botting is expensive, so I doubt anyone will bot you for an extended period of time. And that is a good point about the comments. I have used Adwords before, and those videos have very little interactions. I would just say do not monetize the video to be safe.

 

[WolfWraith]

I doubt you will lose the channel, because the botting rules are not enforced that much. Botting is expensive, so I doubt anyone will bot you for an extended period of time. And that is a good point about the comments. I have used Adwords before, and those videos have very little interactions. I would just say do not monetize the video to be safe.

Yeah, I know, all I could think was "thank god the video wasn't monetised" fortunately, R* prohibit monetisation anyways so I couldn't monetise if I wanted to. I'm not advertising for money reasons either, was just for exposure, seems I got a little more than what I paid/bargained for I keep telling myself that adwords is working but I don't think Google would work that hard for $5 over a 14 day period.