The term ‘page impressions’ (PI) refers to the exact amount of times a particular webpage or an item on a webpage has been viewed or accessed by a web user. A page impression serves as a counter that keeps track of how many times a site has been visited. Every time a page is viewed, it counts as a page impression. In this article, we shed more light on page impressions, their purpose and their importance.
Page impressions refers to the amount of times an HTML document has been viewed in a web browser. When they are registered, they usually aren’t assigned to a specific user, as a single user can view multiple pages and therefore create multiple page impressions. Page impressions are a quantitative analysis, which means that they cannot make a clear assessment of each user’s behavior. As such, website owners rely on other metrics, such as unique visits, to gain an understanding of traffic to their website. However, page impressions do play an important role in web analytics, particularly in regard to the pricing of display ads.
Background Information
Whenever a browser makes a request for a website, the browser loads the HTML document from the server that corresponds with the website. It is then that a page impression is registered within the log file of the server. Page impressions can also be created when a site is automatically visited. As such, both people and web crawlers create impressions. Differentiating between the two can only be done if host names or the sources of visitors are analyzed.
Importance of Page Impressions
Page impressions are important because they are an effective way to measure the amount of daily visitors a website receives. This information allows website owners to find out how many people are viewing their site, which helps to determine the effectiveness of the site.
