What is PV (page view)? We will also explain the differences between UU and sessions!

I started operating an official website and owned media, but when I analyzed access, I encountered technical terms such as ”

PV (page view)

,” “UU (unique user) count,” and “session count,” and I was wondering what they meant. Many people may be having trouble knowing what they are, and how they are different. Although they all refer to the number of accesses, they each have different meanings, so understanding them will be useful for measures to improve access.

Therefore, this time, we will explain what PV is, its meaning, the difference from UU and sessions, how to check PV, and how to increase PV.

What is PV (page view)?

PV stands for “Pageview” and indicates the number of times a particular page on a website is opened, or viewed.

By checking the PV, you can find out how many users have viewed the entire website or web page.

When one web page is displayed on the browser, it is counted as one PV.

For example, suppose Mr. A visits his company’s official website. In that case, if you first access the top page, you will get 1 PV. Then, if you access the company profile page, it will be counted as 1, so it is 2 PV. Furthermore, if you access the business overview page, it will be counted as 1, so the total will be 3 PV.

Additionally, if Mr. A presses the refresh button on the browser on the business overview page to update the page, or returns to the previous company overview page using the “back” button, each will be counted as one count.

The number of PVs can be counted by introducing an access analysis tool such as Google Analytics to your website, and you can check it using the tool.

What is the number of UUs (number of unique users)?

There is something called “UU” that is often confused with PV. This is an abbreviation for “Unique User” and it refers to the number of users who visited a website over a certain period of time.

For example, suppose Mr. A accesses the top page and one of the product pages of an e-commerce site. Then, Mr. A’s PV becomes “2”. Also, suppose that Mr. B accesses the top page, FAQ page, and inquiry page of the same e-commerce site. Then, Mr. B’s PV will be “3”. In other words, if you combine Mr. A and Mr. B, the PV will be “5”.

But UU is different. Since two users, A and B, visited, UU is “2”.

On the other hand, let’s say that Mr. A had been accessing an e-commerce site on a PC, and then immediately accessed the e-commerce site on a smartphone. In this case, UU becomes “3”. This is because PCs and smartphones are considered separate users.

How a user is determined to be “unique” depends on the access analysis tool. There are mainly three types of parsing patterns:

cookies

, IP addresses, and host names. Let’s check the meaning of each.

What is Cookie?

Cookies

are text files generated by websites you visit and stored in your browser. You could call it a visit history. The website uses

cookies

to improve the usability of the website by keeping the user logged in and remembering usage settings. You can also provide information related to the region you are visiting. In other words, since

cookies

are browser-dependent, each UU is counted once per browser. Therefore, if you change your browser or refuse cookies, UUs will not be counted accurately.

By the way, in Google Analytics, UU is referred to as a “user” and cookies are used for analysis.

What is an IP address?

An
address is an address assigned to identify a device such as a PC or smartphone. If UUs are counted by

IP

address, for example, even if a website is accessed several times from a PC with the same IP address, the number of UUs will be counted as “1”.

IP addresses are not strictly unique. The same IP address may be assigned to a completely unknown third party’s PC. Therefore, just like measurements using cookies, measurements based on IP addresses are not accurate.

What is a host name?

A host name is a name given to devices such as PCs and smartphones connected to a network so that humans can easily identify and specify them. It is easy to understand at a glance because it is expressed not only by numbers like an IP address, but also by words that include alphabets. This hostname may also be used for UU analysis.

What is the number of sessions (number of visits)?

The number of sessions refers to the number of visits to the entire website. Therefore, it is also sometimes referred to as the number of visits.

“Visits to the entire website” is difficult to understand, but it becomes easier to understand if you replace it with a physical store. For example, suppose a customer enters an apparel shop in town. Then, the series of actions that the customer takes from entering the store to leaving the store becomes “one visit” or “one session.” In a physical store, it is normal to see various things after entering the store. They look at clothes, talk to store staff, and pay at the cash register. Even if this were an e-commerce site, there would be multiple similar actions. If it’s an apparel e-commerce site, after visiting the site, you can look at some of the clothes on the product page, make an inquiry using a chatbot, see the shipping method page, and if you find a product you like, add it to your shopping cart. and proceed to the accounting page. A “session” is a series of actions performed while viewing multiple pages until the user leaves the e-commerce site.

Common measurement rules for a session to be counted as “1” include if you leave the website for more than 30 minutes, if the date changes, or if the referral source was an external site.

Difference between PV (page view), number of UUs, and number of sessions

Up to this point, there have been three types of access numbers: PV, number of UUs, and number of sessions, and some people may be confused. Let’s clear our heads a little here.

First of all, I think the difference between “PV” and “number of UUs/number of sessions” is clear. This is because PV is counted as 1 regardless of the user if the page is displayed.

On the other hand, UU and sessions are somewhat similar in concept. Because it’s trying to determine the number of users. What’s the difference?

UU is the number of users who visited your website within a fixed measurement period.

On the other hand, the number of sessions is measured from the time a user visits until they leave the site as one session.

In other words, while the number of UUs is mainly used as an indicator to know how many users visit a website within a period, the number of sessions is mainly used to determine the number of visits per user. It’s there to find out what kind of behavior they’re doing.

Below, we have summarized what the PV, UU count, and session count can be used for when performing access analysis.

PV

PV is useful when you want to know how much a website is used.

This is a necessary metric, especially if you earn money by displaying ads on your website. For example, if you are displaying web ads such as Google ads, you need to check the trends in ad revenue per PV. In this case, PV measurement is required.

Number of UUs

The number of UUs is useful when you want to know “how popular a website is among users.”

No matter how many PVs you have, the same users may just be opening the page over and over again. If that’s the case, it’s probably only being used by a small number of users. On the other hand, if there are many UUs, it means that more people are using the website, so it can be evaluated as “a popular website” or “a website with high recognition.” .

Number of sessions

Session count is useful if you want to encourage purchases or inquiries on your website.

For example, on an e-commerce site or your company’s service site, if you want users to purchase more products or higher-ranking products, check whether the products were sold in one user visit or not, and the average number of purchased products. The unit price is generally measured by CVR (conversion rate) per session. If you can barely sell any products in a single visit, you need to do something about it. An indispensable indicator for this measurement is the “session.”

PV (page view) by type/industry guideline/PV examples of major sites

When performing verification using PV, wouldn’t you like to know a rough guideline for how many PVs are needed to produce an effect?

So, let’s take a look at the number of page views per month, which is a guideline for each type of website and industry.

By form

Corporate blog/owned media 10,000 to 100,000 PV/month

EC site 10,000 PV/month Corporate site 3,000 PV/month

Depending on the format, this number is a rough guide. However, the guidelines you should aim for will vary depending on the purpose of your website. For example, the PV required to achieve results will vary depending on whether you are displaying advertisements or what you have set as conversion. Also, it depends on what you want to achieve, so we recommend clarifying your purpose and target value before using PV as an indicator.

Japanese website PV ranking

What kind of website has the highest PV in Japan? The ranking for October 2022 is as follows.

1st place google.com

2nd place yahoo.co.jp

3rd place docomo.ne.jp

4th place youtube.com

5th place twitter.com

6th place news.yahoo.co.jp

7th place amazon.co.jp

8th place rakuten.co.jp

9th place wikipedia.org

10th place google.co.jp

Source: similarweb (Last updated: October 2022)


https://www.similarweb.com/ja/top-websites/japan/

Google and Yahoo! are considered to be in 1st and 2nd place because they have a high search engine usage rate and a large number of pages are displayed.

Third place is NTT Docomo.

According to the Telecommunications Carriers Association’s data on “Number of contracts by carrier in 2022,” of the three carriers NTT Docomo, au, and SoftBank/Y!Mobile (excluding PHS), NTT Docomo accounts for approximately 43% of the total. This makes it the top market share. Since there are many users, it is thought that there are many users of the official website.

Source: “Number of contracts by carrier in 2022” by Telecommunications Carriers Association

https://www.tca.or.jp/database/index.html

Also on display were well-known sites such as video sharing platform YouTube, social media Twitter, news site Yahoo! News, and e-commerce giants Amazon and Rakuten.

Based on this ranking, you can get an idea of ​​which websites have the most PVs.

How to check PV (page view) in Google Analytics

Use an access analysis tool to check the PV. Here, we will introduce how to check PV using

Google Analytics

. Here we will introduce how to use the latest version of ”

Google Analytics 4

Properties (abbreviated as GA4)” released in October 2020.

With

Google Analytics

, you can check the PV of the entire website or the PV of a specific page. To measure, you need to embed a tracking tag in advance on the page of your website that you want to measure.

How to check PV

*This is a screen before measurement, so no numerical values ​​have been obtained yet. Please check the position of the screen for reference.

After logging in to

Google Analytics

, select “Reports” from the menu on the left. A “Report Snapshot” will appear, displaying graphs and numbers. You can check it at a glance here as well. The panel displayed at the bottom right with the title “Number of Views” corresponds to the number of PVs. The page title and number of views are displayed in ranking format from 1st to 7th place.

Let’s take a look at more detailed data. In that case, click the words “→Pages and Screens” at the bottom right of the panel that displays the ranking of impressions to move to the details screen.

On this details screen, you can check the number of PVs for the entire website and the number of PVs for each page. At the bottom of the screen, the top 10 pages are listed in ranking format based on the pages with the most PVs. Of course, you can also view pages below 11th place if you specify them.

You can also specify the date and view the PV from when to when.

By the way, this “Pages and Screens” screen can be displayed by selecting “Reports” → “Engagement” from the menu on the left.

There are also other ways to check the number of PVs for the entire website. When you select “Report” → “Engagement” → “Engagement Summary”, you will see a number displayed as “Number of impressions” near the bottom left of the right screen. That is the number of PVs for the entire website.

How to check the number of UUs

The number of UUs is called the “Number of Users” in

Google Analytics

, and you can also see this at the same time on the “Pages and Screens” screen where you checked the number of PVs earlier. This is the column labeled “User”.

How to check the number of sessions

You can check the number of sessions by selecting “Report” → “Customer acquisition” → “Traffic acquisition” from the left menu.

Benefits of increasing PV (page views)

The idea that more PV is better is becoming widespread, but why is it a good idea to increase PV in the first place? Let’s take a closer look at the benefits of increasing PV.

More likely to lead to conversions

The more PVs you have, the easier it is to achieve your website’s purpose. It can also be said to lead to more conversions. Of course, not only PV but also UU is important, but if a page is used frequently, it may mean that the content of that page is useful, or that the content or the company that operates the website is popular. There is a possibility.

Therefore, it is thought that these pages will more likely lead to conversions such as purchases of products and services, inquiries, and applications. This will make it easier to achieve results.

However, if the conversion rate is low even though the number of page views for the entire website is high, it is necessary to verify as accurately as possible what the cause is.

For example, there may be a problem with the quality of the article, the user group may not be the target audience, or the path to the page that leads to conversion may not be in place.

You can analyze which articles and products people are interested in.

A high PV means that the page is of high interest to users. By checking the PV of each page, it will be useful when devising SEO measures or reconsidering the site structure.

How to increase PV (page views)

So, what specific measures are needed to increase PV? We will introduce what is generally said to be effective.

Implement SEO

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is search engine optimization. This is a method of improving your website to rank higher in search engine results such as Google and Yahoo!. PV refers to how many times a website or page is viewed, so how many customers you can attract is important. Therefore, natural search traffic from search engines is an important source of attracting customers.

The key to SEO is to determine the relationship between keywords that are easily searched and your company’s website content, incorporate search keywords into the content, and create web pages that are highly rated by Google. We will conduct SEO while checking the number of PVs and the source of the inflow, and how many PVs are coming from which keyword searches.

Post a web advertisement

By posting

web advertisements

such as display advertisements, listing advertisements, and SNS advertisements on designated websites, search engines, SNS, etc., you can follow links, increase traffic to your website, and increase PV. It involves placing advertisements and attracting interested people from the advertisements. You will be able to get more traffic that will lead to more conversions.

Operate SNS

This is a method to aim for natural traffic to your website by creating an official account on SNS such as Twitter or Instagram and posting the website URL. By operating on SNS, you can not only install links but also create fans of your company and your brand, so you can expect conversions and long stay times for traffic to your website.

Improving the convenience and navigation of your own site

In order to increase PV, it is essential not only to increase inflow from outside, but also to create a website that is easy to use. By improving the usability and ease of navigation of a website, users can feel that “this website is useful, easy to view, and has useful information,” thereby increasing reliability. This will lead to an increase in repeat customers. Therefore, we can expect that PV will increase as a result. To encourage circulation, there are ways to effectively post links to other related pages within the page.

create quality content

In order to increase the number of accesses from search engines, you need high-quality content that will rank high in search rankings. It can be used as an SEO measure, but above all, by posting the information that users want, you can increase user satisfaction and create fans for your company and brand, which can be expected to have more effects than just increasing page views. Probably. High-quality content is generally information that users are looking for, is highly specialized, and has a reliable and authoritative source.

Other metrics related to number of accesses

If you are interested in PV, number of UUs, number of sessions, etc., you are probably thinking of achieving results through access analysis. Therefore, we will also introduce other indicators related to the number of accesses.

Number of accesses

The number of accesses is a general term that refers to the overall number of times a website is visited. Although there is no exact definition, it sometimes refers to general information such as PV, number of UUs, and number of sessions, and sometimes refers to PV. Therefore, when you receive an inquiry from inside or outside the company asking for the number of accesses, it is better to ask for details, just to be sure, whether you want to know the number of PVs or the number of UUs. Generally, it seems that PV, number of UU, number of sessions, etc. are presented together.

Number of AUs (active users)

The number of AUs (active users) refers to the number of UUs during a particular period of time. For example, as a result of comparing the number of AUs in September 2022 and the number of AUs in October, if the number of AUs in October is higher, it can be confirmed that the number of users is steadily increasing. On the other hand, if the number of AUs in October is lower than the number of AUs in September, it means that the number of users has decreased, so you need to find the cause and make improvements. In this way, AU is useful when you want to check changes over a specific aggregation period.

There are “MAU”, “WAU”, and “DAU” as indicators based on AU. Each of these has the following meaning:

MAU: Monthly Active Users…Number of active users per month

WAU: Weekly Active Users…Number of active users per week

DAU: Daily Active Users…Number of active users per day

summary