What is pageview?

How are pageviews counted?

Pageviews = number of times any tracked page was displayed in the period

A tracking script runs when the page loads and sends one hit to the analytics server. Reloading the page sends another. Opening the same article in three tabs sends three. That's why pageviews are always greater than or equal to the number of unique visitors and sessions.

Single-page apps (React, Next.js, Vue, Svelte) only load the HTML once, so a script that only listens for the browser's load event undercounts badly. Modern trackers hook into the History API (pushState, replaceState and the popstate event) and record a new pageview whenever the URL path changes.

Pageview example

A visitor lands on your homepage, clicks through to /pricing, opens /docs/install in a new tab and later reloads /pricing. That is four pageviews, one session and one unique visitor. Pages per session for that visit is 4.

Across a month, 12,000 pageviews from 4,000 visitors and 5,000 sessions means each visitor viewed 3 pages on average and each session 2.4 pages.

Why pageviews matter

Pageviews show which content gets read and how traffic is distributed across the site. They are also how many analytics tools bill you, so knowing what counts as a pageview tells you what you'll pay. On their own they say little about intent: one person refreshing a page 20 times looks like 20 readers.

Common pageview pitfalls

• Bots inflating the count. Headless browsers and scrapers that execute JavaScript record pageviews like people. Without bot filtering, a scraper run can double a day's numbers.
• Your own visits. Developers reloading the site all day add hundreds of fake pageviews. Exclude yourself.
• SPA double counts or misses. A tracker that fires on both the router event and the load event counts the first page twice; one that ignores route changes counts it once for the whole visit.
• Query strings. /pricing?ref=a and /pricing?ref=b are the same page. Tools that key on the full URL split one page into many rows.

How VisitTrack counts pageviews

The VisitTrack script records a pageview on load and on every client-side navigation that changes the path (query-string-only changes don't create a new pageview). It ignores localhost, file:// pages and iframes by default, and you can exclude your own browser with ?vt_ignore=1 — see script configuration. Every visit is scored as human or bot as it arrives, and bot pageviews are kept but left out of every number, as described in bot filtering.

On pricing, a pageview counts as one event toward your plan, alongside goal completions and payments.