Google Analytics - pages: visits or unique pageviews?

Here's a quick gotcha for you: in Google Analytics, create a custom report with the following details:

- dimensions: page

- metrics: visits, entrances, unique pageviews and page views Save it.

You might expect to see the number of visits as representing "the number of visits who viewed this page". Unfortunately, in Google Analytics, it's actually defined as "the number of visits who enter the site at this page". Closer inspection should show you that visits and entrances are indeed the same.

This is where unique pageviews come in. This is a page level variable rather than a session level variable (visits). In this case, the number represents the number of visits who viewed the pages.

Beware though: removing the page dimension will show the summation of all unique pageviews, this value will not be the same as the number of visits to the entire site.