In web analytics and website management, a pageview or page view, abbreviated in business to PV and occasionally called page impression, is a request to load a single

HTML Hypertext Markup Language (HTML) is the standard markup language for documents designed to be displayed in a web browser. It defines the content and structure of web content. It is often assisted by technologies such as Cascading Style Sheets ( ...

file (

web page A web page (or webpage) is a World Wide Web, Web document that is accessed in a web browser. A website typically consists of many web pages hyperlink, linked together under a common domain name. The term "web page" is therefore a metaphor of pap ...

) of an Internet site. On the

World Wide Web The World Wide Web (WWW or simply the Web) is an information system that enables Content (media), content sharing over the Internet through user-friendly ways meant to appeal to users beyond Information technology, IT specialists and hobbyis ...

, 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 Computer hardware, hardware that accepts requests via Hypertext Transfer Protocol, HTTP (the network protocol created to distribute web content) or its secure variant HTTPS. A user agent, co ...

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

image An image or picture is a visual representation. An image can be Two-dimensional space, two-dimensional, such as a drawing, painting, or photograph, or Three-dimensional space, three-dimensional, such as a carving or sculpture. Images may be di ...

video Video is an Electronics, electronic medium for the recording, copying, playback, broadcasting, and display of moving picture, moving image, visual Media (communication), media. Video was first developed for mechanical television systems, whi ...

JavaScript JavaScript (), often abbreviated as JS, is a programming language and core technology of the World Wide Web, alongside HTML and CSS. Ninety-nine percent of websites use JavaScript on the client side for webpage behavior. Web browsers have ...

s, cascading style sheets (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 web analytics. 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 product (business), goods and services related to the primary operations of a business. Commercial revenue may also be referred to as sales or as turnover. Some compan ...

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, publ ...

and

advertising Advertising is the practice and techniques employed to bring attention to a Product (business), product or Service (economics), service. Advertising aims to present a product or service in terms of utility, advantages, and qualities of int ...

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 web analytics 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 Computer memory stores information, such as data and programs, for immediate use in the computer. The term ''memory'' is often synonymous with the terms ''RAM,'' ''main memory,'' or ''primary storage.'' Archaic synonyms for main memory include ...

accesses (number of HTTPS requests delivered per requests received) that are found in certain levels of the memory hierarchy. 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 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 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 that provides hyperlinks to web pages, and other relevant information on World Wide Web, the Web in response to a user's web query, query. The user enters a query in a web browser or a mobile app, and the sea ...

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 Learned society, scientific society devoted to promote research in, and responsible use of, artificial intelligence. AAAI also aims to increase public under ...

(AAAI) examined the influence of

Reddit Reddit ( ) is an American Proprietary software, proprietary social news news aggregator, aggregation and Internet forum, forum Social media, social media platform. Registered users (commonly referred to as "redditors") submit content to the ...

posts on Wikipedia pageviews.

Feature

Advertisement

Measurement

Hit ratio

Criticism and concerns

Manipulation

Humans vs. machines

Wikipedia pageviews

See also

References

Further reading