You are correct that “jumping” online stories is a sneaky way to boost page views and ad inventory. I see it more on magazine sites than newspaper sites, though I’m noticing it more there, too.

I guess that’s why we’ve been told to emphasize unique visitors. That, too, is less than satisfying.

My biggest complaint against page views remains the deliberate inflation of those numbers by means that actually make the visitor’s experience LESS pleasant and less satisfying.

When I go to non-news Web sites, I don’t have to click on five separate pages to finish reading something.

So which stat is more meaningful:

– Page views (properly counted to include real users and not bots) that guarantee an ad has been loaded (even though it might not be seen by the user).

– Time spent on a site or page (even though that time is undoubtedly inflated at times because of multiple tabs open, an interrupting phone call, etc.)?

– Unique visitors (which could be multiple users on one computer or one user on multiple computers/browsers)?

– Total visits (which would seem to be accurate no matter what the other factors might be)?

Our newspaper company is emphasizing eyeballs at the moment, which means unique visitors. But we also just sold a whole lot of advertising based on page views/impressions. An entire industry is using page views.

Let’s not be so quick to toss it out.

It is working fine in the major readers and also here:

http://www.macloo.com/journalism/

And here:

http://www.journalism.co.uk/bestofblogs.php