Video unique views count hacked?

[MarcoPolo (EPGD Spot]

I have been recently surprised by a sharp increase in the number of unique views of one of my videos.
Although in my opinion the film deserved such a popularity it was just one-day-super-popularity when the views count was several times higher than in the previous and next days.



Investigating that matter farther I have found even more interesting example (it is not my video in that case):


When one of videos is gaining popularity the views count of other films by the same videoghrapher is also affected (users are interested in other works of the same author).
It is easy to check that it does not work the same in that case.

The strange thing is that without that "help" the videos where already very popular.
The conclusion - now it is hard to believe in video statistics... And that is sad.

[Chris Kilroy]

Looking at the two videos in question, and their detailed histories, the view "spikes" were simply caused by outside sites linking to these videos. Normally the links last a day or two only, which is why you see these spikes.