Measure pageviews

Whenever someone loads a page of your website or their browser history state is changed by the active site, an enhanced measurement event called page_view is sent from your website to Google Analytics. Since the event is sent automatically, you don't need to send pageview data to Analytics manually.

However, when you want to manually control how pageviews are sent (e.g. single-page applications or infinite scrolling), you can disable pageviews and then manually send them from your website. Learn how to Measure single-page applications.

This document describes the default pageview behavior and then how to send your own pageviews manually.

For information about how to measure screenviews on a mobile app, see Measure screenviews instead.


Before you begin

This guide assumes that you've done the following:

It also assumes that you have the following:

  • Access to the Tag Manager container for the website
  • The Editor (or above) role to the Google Analytics account

Default behavior

When you set up the Google tag, pageviews are sent to Google Analytics when the tag triggers. You can include additional pageview parameters under Configuration settings.

When customizing the pageview behavior, the following keys may be used:

Name Type Required Default value Description
page_title string No document.title The title of the page.
page_location string No location.href

The URL of the page.

If you override page_location, the value must start with the protocol followed by the full URL; for example, https://www.example.com/contact-us-submitted.

send_page_view boolean No true Whether or not a pageview should be sent.

For example, the following overrides the page_title and page_path values:

A screenshot of the Google tag

Manual pageviews

When you want to manually control how pageviews are sent (e.g. single-page applications or infinite scrolling), do the following:

  1. Disable pageview measurement
  2. Send the page_view event when appropriate

Disable pageview measurement

To disable the default page_view event:

  1. In Tag Manager, edit the Google tag that shouldn't send a pageview.
  2. Under Configuration settings, add the following parameter and value:
    • Parameter: send_page_view
    • Value: false
  3. Save the tag and publish the container.

Manually send page_view events

Where appropriate, make the following update, replacing placeholder values as necessary. Note that the following update uses a GA4 Event tag for the page_view event instead of relying on the pageview that's sent automatically with the Google tag.

A screenshot of the GA4 Event
tag