# Why Traditional Pageview Tracking Fails for Modern Web Applications

DevFeed: [Why Traditional Pageview Tracking Fails for Modern Web Applications](<https://devfeed.tech/articles/how-we-track-pageviews-is-all-wrong-29507.md>)

Original publisher: [Read original article](<https://philipwalton.com/articles/how-we-track-pageviews-is-all-wrong/>)

Published: 2017-04-11T17:46:25Z

Content type: opinion

Language: en

Sources: [Philip Walton](<https://devfeed.tech/sources/philip-walton.md>)

Topics: [Web](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/web.md>), [Single-page application (SPA)](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/spa.md>), [PWA](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/pwa.md>), [browser](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/browser.md>), [data](<https://devfeed.tech/topics/data.md>)

Tags: [analytics](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/analytics.md>), [browser](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/browser.md>), [data](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/data.md>), [patterns](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/patterns.md>), [pwa](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/pwa.md>), [web-app](<https://devfeed.tech/tags/web-app.md>)

## AI overview

The article argues that traditional analytics tools produce unrealistic pageview data for modern websites because they equate pageviews with full page loads. It examines Gmail, single-page applications, and progressive web apps as examples where users can interact with changing or offline content without reloading the page.

## Source excerpt

All analytics tools I know of track pageviews in a way that--to put it bluntly--simply doesn't work for a growing number of websites today and is completely incompatible with the direction the web is heading.