Pageview

Key takeaways

Pageview belongs to science; place it in that map before memorising details.
Learn the definition first, then one example that makes the definition concrete.
Connect Pageview to a quantity you can measure, compute or draw — that is where exam questions come from.
Reproduce the core statement of Pageview from memory before moving on to harder problems.

Reference excerpt

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 file (web page) of an Internet site. On the World Wide 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 is any request made to a web server which includes not just the HTML page itself, but every single file the page needs to load. Therefore, there may be many hits per page view since an HTML page can contain multiple files such as images, videos, JavaScript, cascading style sheets (CSS), etc. Hits can therefore be an inflated number hence pageviews are more meaningful for readership metrics. 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 from the ads. For this reason, it is a term that is used widely for Internet marketing and advertising.

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.

Advertisement Since page views help estimate the popularity of sites, it helps determine their value for advertising revenue. The most common metric is cost per thousand (CPM). CPM (the M is the Roman numeral for 1,000) is commonly used metrics to measure page views divided by the thousands, that is, cost per 1,000 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 pay per click (CPC) or cost per action (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 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 engines 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 (AAAI) examined the influence of Reddit posts on Wikipedia pageviews.

See also Project COUNTER Unique user Session (web analytics) Traffic flow HTTP cookie Web traffic Website monitoring Google Trends Internet manipulation Internet bot

References

Further reading Greenberg, Julia (31 Dec 2015). "Page Views Don't Matter Anymore—But They Just Won't Die". Wired. Retrieved 2 Jan 2016. "Site Server - Capacity Model for Internet Transactions". Microsoft.com. April 1999. Retrieved 26 May 2007. Schurman, Kyle (June 1997). "Is Your Web Site a Hit?". SmartComputing.com. Archived from the original on 2012-02-05. Retrieved 2018-04-29.

Worked examples

Example 1 — a first encounter with Pageview

Start with the simplest possible case. Write down what Pageview claims or describes in one sentence, then invent the smallest concrete situation in which that sentence is true. In science, the smallest case is usually a single object, a single equation or a single measurement. Check that every symbol or term in your sentence has a meaning in that case.

Example 2 — changing one variable

Take the situation from Example 1 and change exactly one quantity: double it, halve it, or set it to zero. Predict what should happen to Pageview before you calculate. Comparing your prediction with the result is the fastest way to find out whether you understand the idea or only the words.

Example 3 — an exam-style question

Typical questions about Pageview ask you to (a) state it precisely, (b) apply it to given data, and (c) explain a limitation. Practise writing all three answers in under five minutes; the third part is what separates a full-mark answer from an average one.

Applications of Pageview

In research: Pageview appears in science research whenever the underlying quantities have to be modelled precisely. Papers usually cite it as a starting assumption and then explore where it breaks down.
In technology and industry: Engineering practice reuses Pageview in design rules, simulations and safety margins. Knowing the idea lets you read a specification sheet and understand why the numbers look the way they do.
In the classroom: Pageview is common in secondary-school and first-year university syllabi. It links to neighbouring topics Advertising indicators, Internet terminology, Web analytics, so understanding it makes those chapters shorter.
In everyday life: Look for Pageview outside the textbook — in sport, cooking, traffic, electronics or the sky above you. An example you found yourself is remembered far longer than one you were given.

How to study Pageview in 20 minutes

Read the reference excerpt below once, without taking notes.
Close the page and write down what Pageview means in your own words.
Compare your version with the excerpt and mark what you missed.
Work through the three examples above with pen and paper.
Explain Pageview out loud to somebody else — or to Teacher Smith in the lgStudy chat.

Frequently asked questions

What is Pageview in simple terms?

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 file (web page) of an Internet site. On the World Wide Web, a page request would result from a web surfer clicking on a link on…

Why does Pageview matter?

Because it connects several science ideas at once: it gives you a definition you can apply, a quantity you can calculate, and a way to check whether a result is plausible.

How should I study Pageview?

Read the excerpt, restate it from memory, then work through the examples and applications listed on this page. The five-step study plan above takes about twenty minutes.

What does this page cover?

It gives you a compact reference excerpt plus original lgStudy explanations, examples, applications and study material on Pageview.