YouTube's Quirky View Counting

[Hulio]

Hey all, I'm very new here so I realize there's probably threads where this has been discussed many times before (a link to them would be all I need!) : ) ... but what is with how youtube counts view counts on videos? There can be one amount shown when listing your videos in the "Video Manager". Then a different amount when in the "Browse Videos" area of the channel. Seriously, there can even be a different amount shown within the "Browse Videos" area depending on whether you're sorting the videos by "newest" or "most popular". Then on the video page itself it can be a different amount and if you did a search for the video that could be a different amount once again. How can there be so many different totals? I've never seen any other website like it in this regard.

And on a somewhat related note, is anyone else experiencing some/most of their view counts stuck lately? My second most watched video gets 80-150 hits a day. My "Analytics" stats show it is getting about 80 hits a day the last 3 days or so. But the view count has been stuck for days. In fact, most of my videos aren't showing any movement for about a day or more now (and again, Analytics is showing the views are happening).

Any enlightenment on this that can get me to stop shaking my head about it? lol

 

[Symph]

It's just lag man, nothing more. Youtube's counters just take a while to register and it gets out at different times, could be due to traffic, could be due to glitches, it's just lag bro.

 

[bwochinski]

Yep YouTube has a big job to keep stats straight all over the place. Thousands of servers from around the world all trying to add the views they counted and then get an update with the latest total... it's never going to happen real-time.

Most other websites are served from a single server, so they just can't run into these issues.

 

[Hulio]

Interesting to know. Thanks for the replies! And I've read everyone is having issues lately with view counts getting stuck. Lag it is, I guess! However, I still find it so strange how there can be as many as 5 different counts for the views on one particular video. Lag or not, there should be just one distinct view count for a video. Oh well, really not a big issue, just very strange. I'd have to think that some of their issues have to originate from this odd way of keeping count.

Happy Tuesday all!