YouTube temporarily removed the video from the official leaderboard on March 7 and said it was investigating the video after several reports emerged questioning its unprecedented rise up the charts.
In the space of just three weeks from mid-February, Bartel's video garnered an additional 40 million visits to overtake Judson Laipply's
Evolution Of Dance
, a clip that had held the top spot for more than 18 months.
During the week-long investigation, the video remained on YouTube's servers, but it was not listed among the Most Viewed (All Time) videos. In that time, it was viewed an additional 25 million times.
Before February's traffic surge the video was listed in YouTube's all time top 10 with about 40 million views.
As of this morning (before the subsequent change),
Hot Hot Sex
was listed as having been viewed 114.3 million times.
Evolution Of Dance
ranked second with 78.6 million views.
In
an interview
with Los Angeles-based blogger Andy Baio last week, Bartel - who doesn't speak English - said he was upset over allegations that he had somehow illegally inflated the video's statistics.
"I barely know how to turn a computer on and off," he said, adding that he had contemplated removing the video.
But he was at a loss to account for its sudden popularity.
"Never would I have imagined that such an ugly video, made on a whim, would make it to the top of the charts," he said
"Believe me, even taking the iPod commercial effect into account, nothing can explain the absurd number of views."
The "iPod commercial effect" refers to a homemade advertisement for Apple's new iPod touch media player uploaded to YouTube last year by 18-year-old British university student Nick Haley.
His ad featured a sound grab from the
Hot Hot Sex
song. It was later discovered by Apple and, with Haley's co-operation, turned into a professionally produced ad that has been screened on TV in the US.