Youtube embedded video views do not count

Question

Many resources claim that views of embedded youtube video DO count, if it there is no autoplay. But it doesn't count actually, and there is no autoplay! The code is:

<iframe width="420" height="315" 
        src="//www.youtube.com/embed/bPnFnHSSO3E?rel=0" 
        frameborder="0" allowfullscreen>
</iframe>

The views of the video using this code DO NOT COUNT even if I play the whole embedded video till the end! The views are incremented if watched directly on youtube, so it is not the "300 views problem".

I have tried to add the enablejsapi option, but it doesn't work as well.

<iframe width="420" height="315" 
        src="//www.youtube.com/embed/bPnFnHSSO3E?rel=0&enablejsapi=1" 
        frameborder="0" allowfullscreen>
</iframe>

The rel=0 option is not affecting that either.

I have found several resources mentioning the issue but without clear solution:

• http://en.forums.wordpress.com/topic/my-embedded-videos-dont-count-as-views-on-youtube
• https://productforums.google.com/forum/#!topic/youtube/MYnJlwIPEts
• https://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20130215234209AAE0jH7

I was testing this in Chrome 34.0.1847.131 m (current version) in such a way that I had the video open on youtube, reloaded it, and the view count was one higher. Then I loaded the embedded videos in another tab, ran them till the end several times (sometimes I even tried to use private window and different IPs using two different proxies), and I reloaded the window on youtube - the view count was still only +1 higher, not +3 or +4 higher as it should be.

Solution 1

Your video have 301 views, its a security system for the views, look:

When a video reach 301 views, the counter stop (is still counting on background) but youtube checks for the authenticity of the views, this takes a couple of days, remember, youtube works on a lot of servers at the same time, so they need to gather all the views metadata and aprove it (because a lot of people use robots to get a lot of views).

After aproval the view count goes back to normal.

Hope it helps

PD: sorry for the bad english.

Solution 2

The only way to work around this I found was to check the Use old embed code option:

so it generated the old embed code with <object>, <embed> and <param>:

<object width="420" height="315"><param name="movie"
value="//www.youtube.com/v/bPnFnHSSO3E?version=3&amp;hl=en_US"></param><param
name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess"
value="always"></param><embed
src="//www.youtube.com/v/bPnFnHSSO3E?version=3&amp;hl=en_US"
type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="420" height="315"
allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true"></embed></object>

This way, the views of embedded video DO count! (tested in Chrome 34.0.1847.131 m).

As noted in the youtube documentation, this code only supports Flash, not HTML5.

This is not a good solution though! But I don't know of any better now.

Comments

[Tomas]

Nope, that's not the reason. You may test it on the second video which has not reached the 300 views yet: www.youtube.com/v/bPnFnHSSO3E and you will see this is clearly not the core of the problem.

[Zerotoinfinity]

@TMS not necessary false. It may not be the reason for your issue but the answer seems to be correct. Check this video youtube.com/watch?v=oIkhgagvrjI .. Under the comment section you will see people are complaining about view count freezing at different count.

[Tomas]

THIS IS NOT AN ANSWER. If I tell you that this is not an issue, because I tested it, then it is not an issue! The video youtube.com/v/bPnFnHSSO3E has 31 views and never got the missing views even after almost a week.

[subhaze]

@TMS This is an answer, whether it's the solution to your problem is another story. Instead of all CAPing words and bolding things as if you're yelling you might want to put that effort into your OP and state that you've tested the ~300 count freeze and found that it is not related to your current issue...

[sphoenix]

Did you find any better solution?

[Sebastián Espinosa]

Just came around to check old answers, it looks like OP was under a lot of stress hahaha