Don't worry, it's not
that people like your content less than before.
YouTube announced that
it would remove a large number of closed accounts to enhance its website
metrics.
"We regularly validate if accounts on YouTube are real and
legitimate, which is part of an ongoing process to make sure that our site
metrics are free of spam, abuse, and closed accounts to keep YouTube a fair
place for everyone," YouTube
said in an official statement.
What Are Closed
Accounts?
Good question! Closed
accounts are those that were either closed by users, that is users who no
longer wanted to have accounts on YouTube, or accounts that were closed by
YouTube or Google because they violated account policies.
If you want to know if
closed accounts were removed from your channel's subscriber count, you will
need to check your YouTube analytics for 3 and 4 December 2019 (which were the
dates for removing the closed accounts).
You can do this from
you YouTube Studio:
YouTube Studio à YouTube Analytics à Select “See more” under the graph à Subscription source à Closed accounts.
Will Closed Accounts
Affect Watch Time?
Since the accounts being
taken down were originally closed, they should not affect a channel's watch
time. Users will only notice a decline in the number of subscribers.
How Does This Update Affect My Channel?
While
it will not impact watch time, subscriber numbers are important in a channel's
monetization and for expanded features and options.
For
example, YouTube stories are only available for channels with over 10,000
subscribers, whereas YouTube's live-stream tipping feature, Super Chat, is made
available when a channel passes 1,000 subscribers.
A
YouTube spokesperson told TechCrunch: “We’re always working to ensure that
metrics on YouTube reflect legitimate user interest and regularly validate the
legitimacy of accounts and actions on YouTube channels. We’ve recently
identified and removed a number of subscribers that were closed accounts from
our systems. Some creators will see their metrics drop as a result, and on
average, impacted channels will see their subscriptions decrease by fewer than
15 subscribers.”
Not the First Time
This isn't the first
time YouTube has decided to clean its plate when it comes to closed accounts.
According to TechCrunch, the video-sharing platform conducted a similar purge
in December 2018, and removed many closed accounts over the course of a two-day
period.
Seems like it's becoming
an end-of-year ritual for YouTube.
"According to social media posts from creators, the impacts
of the purge seem to vary wildly by channel. Some only report losing a few subscribers,
others say they lost thousands," TechCrunch
reported.
Conclusion
While it seems some
channels will be affected by the purge, the move does come to clean the slate
and ensure that metrics are correct.
Channel operators will
need to account for the subscriber decline in their monthly reports for
December as well as their quarterly reports.
Having inflated metrics
may be a good boost to a channel operator's ego, but overall it is not good for
a brand. It's kind of like having fake followers, more or less. Having numbers
that don't serve you or your business aren't worth having. They don’t benefit
you and actually hurt your metrics.
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