Title: Page views
Author: bethurban
Published: July 8, 2025
Last modified: September 22, 2025

---

 1. [User handbook](https://docs.parse.ly/user-handbook/)
 2. [Measuring and reporting performance](https://docs.parse.ly/user-handbook/measuring-reporting-performance/)
 3. [Understanding Parse.ly calculations](https://docs.parse.ly/user-handbook/measuring-reporting-performance/calculations/)
 4. Page views

#  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](https://blog.parse.ly/post/3254/a-closer-look-at-how-pageviews-have-evolved-over-time/).)

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](https://docs.parse.ly/dashboard/)
shows page views as a measure of volume, but always alongside the context of other
[metrics](https://docs.parse.ly/measuring-reporting-performance/).

## 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:

![Sorting a Parse.ly Dashboard tab by mobile views.](https://docs.parse.ly/wp-content/
uploads/sites/5/2025/06/Device-views.png)

Sorting a Parse.ly Dashboard tab by mobile views.

## 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](https://docs.parse.ly/measuring-reporting-performance/).

Last updated: September 22, 2025