When someone like Evan Williams (CEO of Odeo and Blogger co-founder) writes an in-depth analysis on why pageviews are obsolete as one of the primary traffic metrics, it’s hard not to be convinced. Not that this isn’t a beaten path though (also check this Google search), but his post is the first I’ve read that has taken such a strong/absolute stand.

He definitely raises accurate points, which mostly boil down to the proliferation of:

• AJAX
  Reduces your pageview count since pages don’t have to reload.
• RSS
  Reduces your pageview count since views in your RSS viewer are offsite.
• Widgets
  If you’re the purveyor of a widget (i.e. your sites are loaded in a mini-block somewhere else), how do you use pageviews for them? For sure, you can measure how many times they are loaded, but then, they are loaded whether or not anyone looks at them.

He makes one more relevant point based on Mike Davidson’s analysis:

• Lousy Web Site/Interface Design Fuels (Useless) Page Views
  A poorly designed site could require 40 pageviews before getting to what you want (think MySpace), while an excellently optimised one may only need 5 (think Google-type sites).

So, if pageviews do become obsolete, what happens to us bloggers trying to generate some cash from our blogs? Well, I’m tempted to say nothing will change. After all, how many bloggers sell ads on a CPM (cost per 1000 impressions) basis anyway? And if you do, I’m certain they don’t work out to much if compared to your CPC (cost per click) or CPA (cost per action) ads – neither of which really depend on pageviews. The truth is only really big blogs need to worry, and even then, most of those won’t even have to worry.

And out of all the points raised against page views, it’s really only RSS that impacts blogs. So, pageviews actually do measure blog traffic accurately (okay, there’s inflation from those using “Read More” and “Continue Reading”, but for the most part, it’s good), though not completely. So, a simple display of feed subscriber count often solves a big chunk of our problem.

Plus if anything radical does happen, I’d say all we’ll see is even more emphasis on uniques and the accelerated adoption of mostly non-traffic based revenue streams. Cost per action ads maybe. Text Link Ads (referral link) maybe.

Or am I being too naive here?

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