While browsing through the ‘Behavior’ section in Google Analytics, you must have seen the terms ‘pageviews.’ There could be chances of you thinking that the greater the number of views on a page is the more better.
But does this statement really hold any truth?
Here is a blog where we answer what is a pageviews in google analytics? Can pages make you understand your site and audiences in a simpler way? Let’s find out.
What’s a Google Analytics Pageview?
While talking about google analytics pageview, we’ll split them into two words and then help you understand what it is actually.
So, Google Analytics is a tool that comes with several amazing features enabling you to understand certain metrics or dimensions when you rest over the question mark icon.
Pageviews refers to the total number of pages viewed in a given period of time. In simple words, it refers to the viewing of a page that is being tracked by Google Analytics. Talking about views, it can be the starting load of a page, maybe a reload or also a revisit to the page. So, no matter if you revisit the pages, still the repeated views of a single page will be counted.
The official definition of Pageviews provided by Google Analytics is as follows:
A pageview (or pageview hit, page tracking hit) is an instance of a page being loaded (or reloaded) in a browser. Pageviews is a metric defined as the total number of pages viewed.
Let’s give you an explanation of the definition above. Suppose that you have a page of an SEO Agency. Now, pageviews will provide you with the number of times the page is looked on for a specific period. The metric doesn’t talk about the number of visitors who saw the page. It just focuses on the total number of views per page. Here, a single visitor/user can be responsible for many views and a single page can be looked at several times per session.
Google Analytics Pageviews in combination with the other metrics
Google Analytics pageviews are considered to be the indicator of the popularity of a post or a page. But there’s a catch, Having an amazingly greater number of views for a particular post doesn’t mean that it is popular. I know what you’re thinking, Is it really good to have higher views on every visit? Does that mean people are looking forward to reading a lot of pages on your website? Or last but not least, Are visitors not able to find what they are looking for? Remember, a good data analyst will always be evaluating his or her data at regular intervals. A single metric will never give you a clear picture of anything, it’s the context that will provide important insights that you would be able to use.
Now moving on to context, there might be some doubts in your mind like Why ‘sessions’, ‘page views’ and ‘users’ are not appearing in one grid table in Google Analytics?”
There’s a huge reason why Google Analytics is keeping you away from seeing pageviews combined with sessions and users by default. All of this is related to the way Google Analytics performs its data collection.
Adding context to pageviews
Now that you can’t amalgamate user and session metrics to pageviews, Is there anything else you can do to add more context to this metric? – Yes.
Unique Pageviews
Unique Pageviews is the number of sessions during which the specified page was viewed at least once. A unique pageview is counted for each page URL + page Title combination.
The term ‘Unique pageviews’ showcases the number of sessions a certain page was looked on for at least one time.
In simple terms, a unique pageviews metric showcases the total number of unique visitors that visited a specific page. It is altogether different from the Google Analytics pageviews metric that showcases the total number of times a page was looked on. (It might also include the several views from the same user session).
There is so much to explain here, let’s start. Suppose, a visitor visits your website page about SEO Agency, then reads an SEO tips blog or article, and posts that, again visit the SEO Agency page. Among this session, the SEO Agency page was viewed only two times. Now, these two pageviews in a single session will be added to the total number of pageviews for that page. Whereas only one unique pageview will become a part of the total number of unique pageviews for that page during a single session.
Creating Segments
If you wish to see the number of pageviews per visit, you can do so and also create a segment. With this segment, you’ll be able to compare various groups of users and identify the difference between each of them.
What will you be comparing among the groups? – Do these groups read different blogs or articles? Are they buying anything? Do these two groups come from different or the same sources?
Comparing groups on such grounds will help you understand your audience better.
Conclusion
This was the most simple and transparent way to bring Google Analytics pageviews for you. To be honest, these metrics are not the most spectacular ways to use in your analysis. But, if you still wish to go with this option and consider it to be an important metric in your reports, then please try to rethink. There are several more worthy metrics out there.
What are you looking for? Is pageview really a great option to acquire that information? – Presumably not.
