YouTube ditches “301+” video view counter, introduces new method for keeping views up-to-date

YouTube announced a new plan today to finally get rid of the well-known “301+” issue that affected popular videos on the site.

As has been explained by the company in the past, the process of verifying the legitimacy of views on popular videos often meant that when a video hit 300 views, the counter would freeze at “301+” while the rest of the views were verified.

Following today’s announcement, the site will instead always count views that it’s sure came from real people rather than fraudulent video bots designed to artificially juice a videos popularity.

Now view counters will climb right past 301 without stopping, while views that might be fraudulent are filtered out and examined more closely. This means that video view counters will usually be much closer to accurate at all times, even after a sudden spike in views.

The number will still likely not be 100% accurate as legitimate views are caught in the filter and later added to the count after examination, but it will help content creators more accurately gauge the popularity of their videos in real-time.