YouTubers, who are wondering why their YouTube views are down these past months, now have some hard data to confirm their suspicions. Apparently, it is just a particular account's stat that are affected but is actually an industry-wide trend as confirmed by a third party stat tracker.

SocialBlade, a thirty party stat tracker, finally confirmed the worst fears among Youtubers. According to the company, the trend actually affects the entire community saying that Youtube video views dropped across the board, reports Kotaku.

According to SocialBlade, Youtube views decreased on average between 5 to 7 percent since the first half of 2016. The most significant drop happened between July and September when Youtube stats decreased by as much as 10 percent.

While SocialBlade maintains that they pull their data directly from YouTube's API and is therefore reliable, YouTube disagreed with the findings saying that subscriber activity is poorly represented by third party stat trackers. In response, SocialBlade posted on Twitter rebutting the claim by saying that it was their data to begin with.

Danny Fratella, Community Manager of SocialBlade explained via email how the company obtained the data. Fratella said that they pull subscriber or view data daily since 2016 started until November 30, 2016. Data from non-YouTube personalities, such as accounts of record labels and tv studios, were removed leaving only the 49 channels with largest subscriber base.

It is still unclear why YouTube view count decreased across the board. However, Fratella suspects that the online video-sharing giant might have changed the algorithm to its video promotion.

YouTube have spawned a new industry where people from all walks of life have the potential to become stars overnight by uploading their own videos. With the monetary rewards directly proportional to the views their videos generate, Youtubers keep a close watch to their YouTube views stats. At the moment, YouTuber PewDiePie leads the race according to Business Insider, with income for 2016 already breaching the $15 million mark.