Page views

The page view metric shows the number of pages viewed by visitors. (It’s the analytics metric that’s been around the longest — read Parse.ly’s short history of the page view.)

Over time, some have found ways to distort or “game” this metric, from clickbait and galleries to bots. Savvy content providers have also realized that page views, gamed or not, don’t tell the whole story. The Parse.ly Dashboard shows page views as a measure of volume, but always alongside the context of other metrics.

Device views

Dashboard tabs can be sorted by device views (mobile, tablet, or desktop), which rely on the page view metric that Parse.ly collects:

Use cases

• Page views are a good metric to rely on for campaigns, content, or roles where broad awareness and total reach is a main goal.
• Evaluate the marketing or distribution of a page or link. A large number of page views indicates that the link reached a huge amount of people, who were then motivated to click the link and view the page — the first step in getting awareness.
• Understand differences between mobile and desktop audiences.

Pitfalls

• Potential for “gaming” with paid boosts, bot traffic, or on-site use cases like slideshows.
• Page views don’t show much nuance on their own — they’re best used in combination with other metrics.