YouTube Changed How It Counts ‘Views’ Last Month, Inflating New Numbers

YouTube Help: Last year, we updated how we count public views for Shorts to better capture how viewers watch on YouTube. Now, we’re aligning all other video formats to this same standard for consistency across the platform. Beginning on 8/24/2026, a view will be counted the moment a video begins to play — from the very first frame. This standard will now apply globally across all formats. Historically, we’ve used multiple view counting systems across different formats. However, we’ve heard that