These were usability improvements, yes, but they also severely impacted the reliability of the YouTube sub count, and most importantly the live subscriber count, for creators who relied on it as a number to measure their performance. The YouTube subscriber count also suffers from the following issues:

YouTube is one of the largest websites on the Internet. 5 billion videos are watched on YouTube each day, and 300 hours are uploaded to the platform per minute. This massive amount of content people used YouTube for a longer time and started having cluttered subscription feeds, YouTube did the following:

It should also be noted that many channels both large and small have reported losing subscribers that were engaging with their content during one of the YouTube subscriber purges. Many influencers reference a reduction in average views per video or watch time as evidence. Despite these objections, many other influencers support the efforts by YouTube, and wish more was done to rid the platform of fake bot accounts and purchased subscribers.

With billions of viewers every month, YouTube does a lot to ensure that subscriber counts are accurate. To the chagrin of many YouTubers, the social media giant periodically purges subs from people’s channels without their consent. YouTube claims that these are fake and inactive accounts, therefore your watch time is not affected. However, many people get caught off guard when they see a large drop in their subscriber count over night. The people that don’t know YouTube’s policy and process feel outraged to see their YouTube subscriber count drop (rightfully so!). They feel like their progress was taken away without justification.

On YouTube, subscribers are often considered a mark of your success. Getting insight into your live subscriber count is something all creators want. Just like a high score in a video game, or high numbers in your bank account, subscribers are intended to show a tangible sign of a content creator's reach and their progress as a YouTuber. In a perfect world, this is how the YouTube sub count would work:

Here at Grin, we cover all kinds of topics relevant to content creators on YouTube. Today, we're going to tell you how the YouTube subscriber count works, what it's missing, and how Grin’s live subscriber count tool can show you instant, real-time sub counts for your favorite YouTubers and your own channel.

Subscriber Counter on YouTube Is Off Sub Count on Channel vs Sub Counter in Analytics You may notice on occasion that the subscriber counts listed on your public-facing channels do not match the sub counts listed in the Analytics sections for the channels. This is because YouTube does not update channel stats in real time. For the Analytics dashboard, they delay data by 48 hours. YouTube states that this extra time is used to review the new subscribers to make sure they are legitimate and not spam or bot accounts. Sub Count Affected Private YouTube Accounts Another cause of mismatched sub counts is between your public-facing number and your actual subscribers list. This is because many people on YouTube choose to subscribe while keeping their subscriptions private, meaning that you won't be able to track certain subscribers.

How Grin Can Help You Finally, let's talk about the elephant in the room: our team here at Grin. At Grin, we have two primary offerings: our Platform and our Blog. Our Grin Influencer Marketing Platform allows YouTube creators to connect with brands for paid sponsorship opportunities. Brands use Grin to find great YouTube influencers to promote their products. Brands look at a variety of things when deciding who to work with. These include: youtube sub count, average views per video, engagement rates (the ratio of likes + comments + shares divided by views), content quality, personality fit for the brand, other social network profiles that may be relevant for their influencer marketing campaign, among other things. Our Blog, meanwhile, offers a wide variety of informative posts, just like this one. We offer our blog for free because our goal is to help you grow as a creator - if that's your goal, too, we recommend you stick around. These were usability improvements, yes, but they also severely impacted the reliability of the YouTube subscriber count, and most importantly the live sub count, for creators who relied on it as a number to measure their performance. The YouTube subscriber counter also suffers from the following issues:

Subscribers, What Are They Exactly? A subscriber on YouTube is simply someone that's subscribed to your channel. This means that they will see your channel in their subscription feeds whenever you choose to upload a video, and in theory means you have a reliable viewer for every video you make. Unfortunately, this isn't always true. There's a lot of complications in this relationship between creator and subscriber, and we're going to dive into that right now.

Subscriber Count vs Watch Time Watch time determines how much YouTube chooses to boost your videos, and if your watch time remains the same after a subscriber purge you can be comforted in knowing that you didn't lose anything. Look here for a full guide on YouTube subscribers.