This is Why YouTube Video View Counts are Always at 301

You’ve watched YouTube videos before. You’re a tech savvy individual. So you’ve surely noticed that new YouTube videos seem to always get stuck around 301 on their view count. What’s the deal? The clever cats over at Mental Floss are here to explain it for us.

Basically, the answer is robots. Google-bots to be precise.Google is very concerned about fake view numbers — because YouTube revenue is based on views. So when a hot new video starts racking up hits, Google’s system automatically freezes the view count at 300. They then verify that the people viewing the video are actual people and not some sort of robot scam. But because so many people are watching at once, there will more often than not be two people watching the video right as the view count hits 300. So it freezes at 301 instead.

Seems simple enough. Though Mental Floss’ Craig Benzine explains it far better above.