web analytics Web analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis, and reporting of web data to understand and optimize web usage. Web analytics is not just a process for measuring web traffic but can be used as a tool for business and market research and ...

and

website management A website (also written as a web site) is a collection of web pages and related content that is identified by a common domain name and published on at least one web server. Examples of notable websites are Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Wi ...

, a pageview or page view, abbreviated in business to PV and occasionally called page impression, is a request to load a single

HTML The HyperText Markup Language or HTML is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It can be assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) and scripting languages such as JavaS ...

file ( web page) of an Internet site. On the

World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW), commonly known as the Web, is an information system enabling documents and other web resources to be accessed over the Internet. Documents and downloadable media are made available to the network through web ...

, a page request would result from a web surfer clicking on a link on another page pointing to the page in question. In contrast, a hit refers to a request for any file from a

web server A web server is computer software and underlying hardware that accepts requests via HTTP (the network protocol created to distribute web content) or its secure variant HTTPS. A user agent, commonly a web browser or web crawler, initia ...

. Therefore, there may be many hits per page view since an HTML page can contain multiple files such as

image An image is a visual representation of something. It can be two-dimensional, three-dimensional, or somehow otherwise feed into the visual system to convey information. An image can be an artifact, such as a photograph or other two-dimensio ...

video Video is an electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving visual media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, which were quickly replaced by cathode-ray tube (CRT) sy ...

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language that is one of the core technologies of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. As of 2022, 98% of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior, of ...

cascading style sheets Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used for describing the presentation of a document written in a markup language such as HTML or XML (including XML dialects such as SVG, MathML or XHTML). CSS is a cornerstone tec ...

(CSS), etc. On balance, page views refer to a number of pages viewed or clicked on the site during the given time. Page views may be counted as part of

. For the owner of the site, this information can be useful to see if any change in the "page" (such as the information or the way it is presented) results in more visits. If there are any advertisements on the page, the publishers would also be interested in the number of page views to determine their expected

revenue In accounting, revenue is the total amount of income generated by the sale of goods and services related to the primary operations of the business. Commercial revenue may also be referred to as sales or as turnover. Some companies receive rev ...

from the ads. For this reason, it is a term that is used widely for

Internet marketing The Internet (or internet) is the global system of interconnected computer networks that uses the Internet protocol suite (TCP/IP) to communicate between networks and devices. It is a '' network of networks'' that consists of private, pub ...

and

advertising Advertising is the practice and techniques employed to bring attention to a product or service. Advertising aims to put a product or service in the spotlight in hopes of drawing it attention from consumers. It is typically used to promote a ...

Feature

The page impression has long been a measure of user activity on a website. However, the activity is not necessarily associated with loading a complete HTML page. Modern programming techniques can serve pages by other means that don't show as HTTP requests.

Since page views help estimate the popularity of sites, it helps determine their value for advertising revenue. The most common metric is CPM. It stands for 'Cost per thousand'(the M is the

Roman numeral Roman numerals are a numeral system that originated in ancient Rome and remained the usual way of writing numbers throughout Europe well into the Late Middle Ages. Numbers are written with combinations of letters from the Latin alphabet, ea ...

for 1,000) and it is commonly used metrics to measure page views divided by the thousands, that is, cost per 1000 views, used for the ad rates and thus, the less CPM is, the better deal it offers to advertisers. However, there has been a growing concern that CPM is not as trustworthy as it looks in the advertising market because, although, with CPM arrangement, everyone who visits a site makes publishers’ money, for an advertiser's view, CPM is being challenged in comparison to CPC or CPA in terms of adverts’ efficiency because visiting does not mean clicking the ads.

Measurement

The preferred way to count page views is using a

software. They can measure the number of pages on any site and therefore, it helps people to receive a rough estimate of page views on web sites. There are also many other page view measurement tools available including open source ones as well as licensed products.

Hit ratio

Hit ratio refers to the percentage of

computer memory In computing, memory is a device or system that is used to store information for immediate use in a computer or related computer hardware and digital electronic devices. The term ''memory'' is often synonymous with the term '' primary storag ...

accesses (HTTPS requests delivered per requests received) that are found in certain levels of the

memory hierarchy In computer architecture, the memory hierarchy separates computer storage into a hierarchy based on response time. Since response time, complexity, and capacity are related, the levels may also be distinguished by their performance and controll ...

. In other words, it is a measure of content requests that a web caching system can deliver successfully from its cache storage, compared to how many requests it receives. There are two types of hit ratios: * Cache hit ratio, referring to number of requests made; * Byte hit ratio, referring to amount of bandwidth that a browser's caching system has saved.

Criticism and concerns

Despite a wide range of uses of page view, it has come in for criticisms.

Manipulation

Page view can be manipulated or boosted for specific purposes. For example, a recent incident, called 'page view fraud', compromised the accuracy of measurement of page view by boosting the page view. Perpetrators used a tool called 'a bot' to buy fake page-views for attention, recognition, and feedback, increasing the site's value. As a result, some people already started building alternatives to measure audiences, such as "Ophan", saying that the page view is becoming passe.

Humans vs. machines

Fake page views can reflect

bots The British Overseas Territories (BOTs), also known as the United Kingdom Overseas Territories (UKOTs), are fourteen territories with a constitutional and historical link with the United Kingdom. They are the last remnants of the former Bri ...

instead of humans.

Wikipedia pageviews

Wikipedia provides tools that allow one to see how many people have visited a Wikipedia article during a given time period. Such have been used for tools that for instance display the most popular articles of the day. Wikipedia pageviews of certain types of articles

correlate In statistics, correlation or dependence is any statistical relationship, whether causal or not, between two random variables or bivariate data. Although in the broadest sense, "correlation" may indicate any type of association, in statistics ...

with changes in stock market prices, box office success of movies, spread of disease among other applications of datamining. Since

search engine A search engine is a software system designed to carry out web searches. They search the World Wide Web in a systematic way for particular information specified in a textual web search query. The search results are generally presented in a ...

s directly influence what is popular on Wikipedia such statistics may provide a more unfiltered and real-time view into what people are searching for on the Web and societal interests. For instance they can be used to gain insights into public anxiety and information seeking after or during events or for the identification of concepts with significant increase of interest from the public. In 2015, a study conducted by the

Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence The Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI) is an international scientific society devoted to promote research in, and responsible use of, artificial intelligence. AAAI also aims to increase public understanding of artif ...

(AAAI) examined the influence of

Reddit Reddit (; stylized in all lowercase as reddit) is an American social news aggregation, content rating, and discussion website. Registered users (commonly referred to as "Redditors") submit content to the site such as links, text posts, imag ...

posts on Wikipedia pageviews.

Feature

Advertisement

Measurement

Hit ratio

Criticism and concerns

Manipulation

Humans vs. machines

Wikipedia pageviews

See also

References

Further reading