Question

I am fetching the youtube viewcount from the Youtube XML data obtained from the url : https://gdata.youtube.com/feeds/api/videos/VIDEOID?v=2

But I observed 2 things about the viewcount attribute in the xml data:

1. The viewcount attribute is not created as soon as the video is uploaded. It takes 1 to 2 days for the viewcount attribute to appear in the XML.

2. Once the viewcount attribute appears,if I view a video several times(say 4), and check the viewcount, it is 4 in Youtube site(mobile version and desktop version) but less than 4(say 1) in the XML data

This is creating a problem for me coz I have to display the viewcount(which is same as in Youtube site) in my application. Is there any other way of fetching the Youtube video viewcount which is the latest?

Please suggest.

Answer 1

It is noted in the API documentation that there might be a delay in the statistics data under Expected latency for data updates http://code.google.com/apis/youtube/2.0/reference.html#Overview:

Statistics, such as the number of times a video has been viewed or the
number of comments available for a video, are typically updated within
30 minutes to two hours after the upload completes. However, this
delay may be longer under heavy API server loads.

On an ongoing basis, statistics for a video are typically updated
every 30 minutes to two hours. However, updates may occur less
frequently under heavy server loads or for videos that are viewed very
infrequently. In search feeds, updates to ratings and view counts
could take as long as a couple of weeks for infrequently viewed
videos.