What Are Pageviews? (How to Track and Improve Them)

Pageviews are a web analytics metric that counts each time a visitor loads or reloads a page on your website.

Each instance of a user viewing a page is one pageview, regardless of whether the same user views the same page multiple times.

Tracking pageviews helps you measure traffic volume and understand which content attracts the most attention.

But:

Pageviews are not the most important metric you should track. I’ll explain why below, but first let’s clarify what they are in the context of a few other metrics.

Pageviews vs. Users vs. Sessions

Pageviews represent the total number of times people view your pages. If someone visits your homepage, clicks to your blog, then returns to your homepage, that counts as three pageviews.

Unique pageviews, on the other hand, combine multiple views of the same page during a single session. If that same visitor views your homepage twice in one session, it would count as just one unique pageview.

In the context of analytics tracking tools, unique pageviews were a Universal Analytics metric. Google Analytics 4 (GA4) doesn’t track unique pageviews.

A user is an individual person visiting your site. A session is a group of interactions one user takes on your site within a given time frame.

Here’s an example of how these all tie together:

Imagine someone discovers your site through Google. They land on your homepage, check out your about page, read a blog post, go back to the homepage, then get distracted by a phone call.

Two hours later, they return to your homepage, browse your product page, and then make a purchase through your checkout page.

Here’s how your analytics would count this activity:

Understanding these distinctions helps you interpret your data accurately and make better marketing decisions.

For example, a high pageview-to-user ratio means visitors are exploring multiple pages on your site. This is generally a good sign of engagement.

This is just one reason it’s important to track pageviews alongside other metrics.

Why Pageviews Aren’t the Most Important Metric to Track

Pageviews tell you how many times your pages are being viewed by your audience.

But they don’t tell you:

That’s why pageviews are sometimes described as a vanity metric.

Sure, it feels great to see that graph trending upward. But more pageviews doesn’t automatically mean more business.

Put it this way:

Would you rather have 100K monthly pageviews with a 0.1% conversion rate, or 10K pageviews with a 3% conversion rate?

The big number is attractive, but the math is clear: the latter gives you 3x as many conversions (300 vs. 100).

But what about 100,000 pageviews and a 0.3% conversion rate? You’re still getting the same number of conversions, and you’re reaching a much bigger audience.

I’d still take the 10K visitors with the 3% conversion rate.

Why?

Two reasons:

If my realistic target market is 200K people per month, I can only double my audience size with the first example. With a 0.3% conversion rate, that would be a total of 600 conversions each month.

But with the 10K example and a 3% conversion rate, there’s room to potentially scale my audience size by 20x. While obviously a big feat, this could eventually lead to 6,000 new customers each month.

Obviously this is a major simplification. There are factors like marketing fatigue, limits on the number of potential customers that would ever become paying customers, and limits on my own abilities to scale.

But I’d always take a smaller, more engaged audience that converts more often over a larger, less engaged one.

In organic search, this means meeting the search intent. For paid ads, it could be a matter of producing great creatives and landing pages.

Conversion rates aren’t the only metrics to track either. Other important ones include:

These metrics tell you how well you’re positioning your products, how targeted your audience is, and how effective your ad campaigns are. Insights you can’t get from pageviews alone.

Pageviews, Cookies, and Bots

There’s another reason you shouldn’t just pay attention to pageviews: you can’t always trust the numbers.

With a focus on privacy, the digital world is trying to move away from tracking measures like third-party cookies.

Tools like Google Analytics rely on cookies and tracking codes to track pageviews, so user consent levels can affect the numbers.

You might have 500 people visit your page in a month. But if 250 of them decline your tracking cookies, your analytics will be off by 50%.

Not only that, but we also can’t ignore the potential for bot traffic. Google Analytics does a reasonable job of filtering these out, but it’s not perfect.

So you can’t always take your pageviews metric at face value.

But which numbers don’t lie?

Your conversions.

Bots don’t tend to buy things, and even if a user denies cookies, they can still sign up to your email list, download a template, or buy your products.

This is why your bottom line metrics are far more important to track than just watching your pageviews number.

With that said, pageviews do matter a lot in certain contexts.

When Pageviews Are Actually Important

Pageviews are an important measure of your overall reach. This in itself is helpful as a site owner.

But pageviews are particularly important in a few other cases.

Display Ads

If you run display ads on your site, pageviews directly impact your bottom line. More eyeballs on your pages typically means more ad impressions and more revenue.

That’s because display ad networks tend to pay on an RPM basis, or revenue per thousand impressions.

This is why news sites and entertainment blogs in particular obsess over pageviews. Their business models depend on it.

Brand Awareness

When you’re trying to grow your brand awareness, getting more pageviews indicates you’re reaching a wider audience.

If your goal is simply to get your brand in front of as many people as possible, it makes sense to focus on pageviews.

How to See Pageviews in Google Analytics

Google Analytics is the interface most people will likely be familiar with when it comes to tracking pageviews. They’re no longer actually called pageviews, and are simply referred to as “views” now.

But for all intents and purposes, they’re the same thing.

How to Find Pageviews in GA4

Google Analytics 4 works differently from Universal Analytics, which it fully replaced in 2024. Instead of focusing on pageviews by default, it’s built around “events,” and pageviews are just one type of event (labeled “page_view”).

You can see your site’s total pageviews on the overview page in your GA4 property. If it doesn’t display by default, just click the drop-down and set it to “Views.”

But to see pageviews by page, first click “Reports” > “Life cycle” > “Engagement” > “Pages and screens.”

You’ll end up on the “Pages and screens” report.

This shows a graph and table of your pages with the most pageviews (again, just called “views” in GA4).

If you scroll down, you’ll see a table with page views, along with other metrics like users and information about engagement.

You can sort by pageviews to quickly see which of your pages are underperforming.

You can also search for specific pages to track their performance:

How to See How Many Pageviews Other Websites Get

Understanding how many pageviews your site gets is clearly useful. But it’s even more useful when you can compare that number to your competitors.

You can get an estimate of how many pageviews a site gets using a traffic checker, like