I've kept saying this for years: page views don't exist anymore.

Sorry for those who just started to understand this concept, but they already have to move on to another one.

Why aren't page views a reliable concept anymore ?

The single-file document model is dead

The paradigm of a document made of a single html file has been false since frames and iframes (html pages embedded within main pages) were invented. And this was already around ten years ago.
So, we (market research companies, webmasters, engineers) have done whatever we could to fit the reality into the model. When we can (that's what we were doing for an Internet panels company), we analysze the structure of a page to extract the different elements.
And, at this moment, we end up into a real nightmare: the pieces of content come from different content providers! Who gets the credit of a "page" in which a bloc is delivered from a partner? Do we have to plug a camera into the eye of each panelist, in order to know what they actually read?

And Ajax, page views last public warning?

Ajax only refers to the capacity of refreshing a part of a document without modifying the rest of the content. The famous examples are Google's email, calendar or maps services. You can see on these sites: there is only one page! The user can spend hours on these sites, but the URL never changes!

This time, it is not possible to fit the reality into the model. Let's hope that Internet stakeholders (advertisors, agencies, media sites, market research companies...) will at last understand that the model must be changed.
Changed? To what? Be patient, read this blog and you'll know...

Internet is a new medium, standards are not ready yet. But a change in the model after ten years, it's not too bad, is it?