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

Pageviews tell us how many times someone opens or reloads a page on our website. Each time a person looks at a page, it counts as one pageview, even if the same person views the page more than once. Tracking pageviews helps us see how much traffic we’re getting and which pages people like the most.

But: Pageviews are not always the most important number to look at. We’ll explain why in a bit, but first, let’s compare pageviews with other useful numbers.

Pageviews vs. Users vs. Sessions

Pageviews show the total number of times people visit our pages. For example, if someone opens our homepage, goes to our blog, and then returns to the homepage, that counts as three pageviews.

Unique pageviews are a little different. They count multiple views of the same page during one visit as just one. So if someone sees our homepage twice in one visit, it only counts as one unique pageview.

In older tools like Universal Analytics, unique pageviews were tracked. But in the newer version, Google Analytics 4 (GA4), unique pageviews are not shown. A user is one person who visits our site. A session is the time that a user spends on our site doing different things.

Here’s a simple example to show how it works:

Someone finds our site on Google. They visit the homepage, check the about page, read a blog post, and go back to the homepage. Then they get a phone call and stop browsing. Two hours later, they come back, visit the homepage again, view a product page, and buy something.

Here’s how this visit would be counted:

• Users: 1
• Sessions: 2 (first visit and second visit)
• Pageviews: 7 (homepage, about page, blog post, homepage, homepage, product page, checkout)
• Unique pageviews: 6 (the two homepage views in one session count as one)

Knowing the difference between these numbers helps us understand our website better and make smart choices for marketing. For example, if we have a lot of pageviews compared to users, it means visitors are checking out more pages, which is a good thing.

That’s why it’s helpful to track pageviews along with other numbers.

Why Pageviews Aren’t the Most Important Metric to Track

Pageviews show how many times people look at pages on our website.

But pageviews alone don’t tell us everything. They don’t show:

• If visitors enjoyed their time on our site
• If they want to read more
• If they plan to buy something

This is why pageviews are sometimes called a “vanity metric.” It looks good to see the number go up, but more views don’t always mean more success.

Think about it like this:

Would we prefer 100,000 pageviews with only a few people buying, or 10,000 pageviews with more people buying?

Let’s do the math:

• 100,000 views with a 0.1% conversion rate = 100 buyers
• 10,000 views with a 3% conversion rate = 300 buyers

Even with fewer views, we get more customers in the second case.

Now imagine 100,000 pageviews with a 0.3% conversion rate. That’s still 300 buyers. It’s the same number of conversions, but with a much bigger audience.

We’d still pick the smaller group with the higher conversion rate.

Here’s why:

1. A higher conversion rate means we’re offering something people really want.
2. There’s a better chance to grow that audience and get even more conversions.

If we know there are 200,000 people we can realistically reach each month, the first example can only grow so much. Even if we double the size of the audience, we get 600 buyers.

But with the 10,000 visitors and 3% rate, there’s a chance to grow 20 times bigger. If we could do that, we’d end up with 6,000 buyers every month.

Of course, this is a simple example.

There are things like limited markets, how often people buy, and how much we can grow our efforts. Still, we’d rather have a smaller, active audience than a large group that doesn’t take action.

In SEO, this means matching what people are really searching for. With paid ads, it means using better ads and helpful landing pages.

Conversion rates aren’t the only thing to look at. Other important numbers include:

• Average order value (AOV)
• Cost to get a new customer
• How much a customer is worth over time
• Return on ad spend (if we run paid ads)

These tell us how well we’re selling, how good our ads are, and if we’re reaching the right people. Pageviews can’t show all of that.

Pageviews, Cookies, and Bots

There’s another reason we shouldn’t only focus on pageviews: the numbers might not be exact.

Web tools like Google Analytics use tracking cookies to count views. But if someone doesn’t allow cookies, their visit might not be counted.

So, if 500 people visit our site, but 250 say no to cookies, we might only see 250 views in the report.

Also, bots sometimes visit pages. Google tries to block them, but it’s not always perfect. So not every view is from a real person.

But here’s something we can trust: conversions.

Bots don’t buy products. And even if someone says no to cookies, they can still sign up, download something, or make a purchase.

This is why it’s better to focus on real results, like signups and sales, instead of only looking at pageviews.

That said, pageviews do matter in some cases, like when we’re testing new content or checking which topics get the most clicks.

When Pageviews Are Actually Important

Pageviews help show how far our content is reaching. This is useful for us as website owners. But pageviews are even more important in certain situations.

Display Ads

If we use display ads on our website, page views affect how much money we can make. More people seeing our pages means more ad views, which can bring in more income.

This happens because most ad networks pay based on RPM (revenue per thousand impressions). That’s why news and entertainment websites focus so much on pageviews—they need the views to earn money.

Brand Awareness

If we’re trying to let more people know about our brand, pageviews can show how many people we are reaching. So, if the goal is to be seen by more people, it makes sense to keep an eye on pageviews.

How to See Pageviews in Google Analytics

Most of us use Google Analytics to check our pageviews. In the new version (GA4), they are now just called “views.” But they still mean the same thing as pageviews.

How to Find Pageviews in GA4

Google Analytics 4 is different from the older version, Universal Analytics, which ended in 2024. GA4 focuses on “events,” and pageviews are one of those events. They’re labeled as “page_view.”
To see total pageviews, go to your GA4 property’s main page. If it doesn’t show up right away, click the drop-down menu and choose “Views.”

To check views by each page:

Go to Reports > Life cycle > Engagement > Pages and screens.

This will take you to the “Pages and screens” report. There, you’ll see a graph and a table showing which pages have the most views. If you scroll down, the table also shows other useful information, like a number of users and how people interact with the page.

How to See How Many Pageviews Other Websites Get

Knowing how many pageviews our website gets is helpful. But it becomes even more helpful when we can compare our numbers to other websites. We can get an estimate of their pageviews using a traffic checker tool, like a free online traffic checker.

But here’s something important to know: There’s no exact way to see another website’s pageviews unless we have access to their analytics account.

To count pageviews properly, a website needs to add a small code or pixel. If it’s not our site, we can’t see how often that code runs.

Most traffic tools use estimates. They gather data from sources like public websites or users in their system.

The numbers can be more accurate for big websites with lots of traffic, since those sites leave more data for the tool to use.

So, these tools are better for spotting trends, not exact numbers.

Here’s an example:

Let’s say we own a coffee brand called Mountain Bean Coffee and we get 22,000 pageviews per month, according to GA4.

We want to check how we compare with other coffee websites. We put our site into a traffic checker, and it says we get 16,400 visits each month.

Even though that’s less than our real number, we can use it as a base to compare others.

We check three other coffee sites, and the tool gives us this:

• MakersCoffee.com: 4,600 visits
• PressCoffee.com: 8,200 visits
• DrinkTrade.com: 303,900 visits

From this, we can see that we have more traffic than some, like Makers Coffee, but not as much as Trade Coffee.

We know these numbers are not exact. But they still help us see where we stand.

Let’s say next month Press Coffee shows 20,000 visits, and we only reach 18,000.

Even if the tool undercounts us, we can assume they now get more pageviews than we do.

Track More Than Just Pageviews

Pageviews are helpful to see how much traffic we get or how popular our content is. But they’re not the only numbers that matter.

Most businesses also look at things like how many people buy from the site, how much it costs to get new customers, and how much each customer is worth in the long run.