Views are considered the denomination of YouTube. Often more views will translate to higher rankings in the search results and improved circulation numbers in the sidebar. As a matter of fact, these will affect how much money a YouTuber can make. What’s more, if a video gets a considerable number of real YouTube views it will become popular in just a short period of time.

YouTube, however, has a strict rule for what is considered as a view. In fact, if it finds out that it is fake it will remove it immediately. So, if you have noticed, your number of views reduced, this basically means that you have fake views.

If you are wondering how to find out if your YouTube views are real or fake, then read on.

The watch time is low but the views are considerably high

If you’re a content creator or running a business that has a channel on YouTube or somebody is advertising your content, you can head to YouTube analytics and then check the watch time to see if the views are engaged.

To do this, login to your YouTube account > Analytics > Audience Retention that can be found under the Views Reports. After that, enter the video’s title and you’ll find out where the viewers drop off.

Most YouTube videos will begin high, and then level out for the mainstream of the content and in the end, it will have a hard drop.

If you notice a hard drop at the start of the video, then there is no reason to ask whether the viewers are targeted or legitimate.

The engagement ratio of the views is way off

If the has video has 500,000 views but it doesn’t have any comments, obviously, the views are fake. In a decent technique, the ratio would not be evidently this out of control since people usually leave a comment after watching a video, they even like and share the content.

With paid YouTube views, often the video is embedded in an advertisement unit or someplace off-YouTube in which engagement is less likely to happen.

Keep in mind that all videos on YouTube are different. But if you take a look at them closely, you easily perceive that the engagement ratio is a bit off. However, if you are not certain, check out the same video and find out what the views to ratio are.

We hope that this article has helped you in determining whether you have fake or real YouTube views.