In Univeral Analytics, the old version of Google Analytics, there were metrics called "Unique Pageviews". However, that metric does not exist in GA4.
So if you have been using Unique Pageviews in your reports then what should you do in GA4? That's what I am going to share in this post.
Before we look at our option in GA4, let's first see what this metric is and how it is calculated.
What is the Unique PageView metric?
Unique Pageviews measure the number of times a unique session visits that page. While Pageview counts the total number of times a page was viewed, Unique PageView dedupes the sessions and counts one session only once.
Let's take an example:
Say, Anil visits the "GA4 Course" page three times in a session. In that case
Pageviews = 3
Unique Pageview = 1
Now let's say Anil also visits a "BigQuery with GA4" page 1 time. In that case
Pageviews = 1
Unique Pageview = 1
Now, assuming Anil is the only visitor who came to the site that day. So the total numbers will be
| Page | Page View | Unique Page View |
| GA4 Course | 3 | 1 |
| BigQuery with GA4 | 1 | 1 |
In Univeral Analytics this would result in the following totals
| Page | Page View | Unique Page View |
| GA4 Course | 3 | 1 |
| BigQuery with GA4 | 1 | 1 |
| Total | 4 | 2 |
This metric is intended to measure Unique Sessions that visit a particular page. I guess the reason they invented these metrics instead of using session was to avoid the complexity of calculations in the backend.
However, now they have rectified it and Sessions can be included in the pages report in GA4.
So the logic says that you should use Sessions in GA4 to replace Unique Pageviews in Univeral Analytics.
But that poses a problem.
Why is that? Let's take a look.
Sessions and Pageviews in GA4
Taking the same scenario, here is what GA4 will report
| Page | Page View | Sessions |
| GA4 Course | 3 | 1 |
| BigQuery with GA4 | 1 | 1 |
This looks exactly like how it was in Universal Analytics. But the problem lies when you report the total.
| Page | Page View | Sessions |
| GA4 Course | 3 | 1 |
| BigQuery with GA4 | 1 | 1 |
| Total | 4 | 1 |
See the difference? No, let's put them side by side
| Page | Page View | Unique Page Views (UA | Sessions (GA4) |
| GA4 Course | 3 | 1 | 1 |
| BigQuery with GA4 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| Total | 4 | 2 | 1 |
When calculating totals, UA did not further de-dupe the unique so it took the Unique Page view count of each page and summed them up to do a total, which turns out to be 2 in our example.
However, when calculating totals for sessions in GA4, they get deduped. Since Anil is in the same session total sessions across the pages are still 1.
So if you switch Unique Pageviews count (UA) to Sessions in GA4 then you need to keep this in mind and explain this to your stakeholders, since your numbers won't match.
Hope this clarifies the Unique Pageview vs Session issue.
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