Pageview

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.