There was a time when you could embed a YouTube video all over a popular site like MySpace, append an autoplay code, and then watch your view count explode. Several videos were catapulted to the front page thanks to the huge amounts of views attributed to MySpace browsers landing on profiles which contained the embedded video in question. Of course, once a video makes it to YouTube’s first page of “most viewed” for the day, as long as it is remotely interesting (or has an interesting thumbnail), it will gain a great deal of exposure. This was a secret to success among many YouTube gamers (such as myself).
However, as of recently, autoplay views from external websites no longer count towards a video’s total view count. It appears the good folks at YouTube finally wised up to the method and put a stop to it.
To the best of my knowledge, user-initiated views from externally embedded videos (without autoplay) are still counted, but I’m not positive that each and ever view is counted. It can be difficult to gather accurate information because of the sluggish way YouTube video views update (I’ve seen view count freezes as long as 72 hours).
If you’re not already familiar with how to view what sites have your content embedded, simply go to your video’s page, and click the “Statistics & Data” tab (next to the “Commentary” tab). The top 5 linking sites will be shown beneath any honors the video might currently hold. Some video owners choose to disable the viewing of linking sites (a feature that was popular when the method of autoplaying embedded videos was still effective).
Tags: autoplay, gaming youtube
