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The number is up for YouTube’s 301+ views viral video counter

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By John Glenday, Reporter

August 6, 2015 | 2 min read

YouTube is calling time on its famous mechanism for calculating the reach of viral videos, a system which freezes the view count of popular posts at 301+ whilst it manually checked for spam, as it implements a new strategy for calculating reach.

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This would see the all-important views counter freeze at 301+ whilst moderators verified the true figure, a process which could take a considerable amount of time.

In a break with tradition however Google will now automatically update the ticker in real time for all views considered to originate from humans, as opposed to bots, sparking the end of the 301+ legend.

The quirk of this methodology had seen many would be viral video creators bill their clips as ‘301+ views’ as a means of implying that their content was on the cusp of a viral outbreak but the changeover will necessitate a change in tactics.

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