Entrances and landing pages
Entrances count the number of times a page was the first pageview in a session — the doorway through which visitors entered the site. It differs from total pageviews because a page can be viewed mid-session without being an entrance. Entrances define which pages act as landing pages, and pairing entrances with bounce or engagement shows how well each doorway performs.
What this means
An entrance is logged when a page is the first pageview of a session. The page where a session begins is its landing page; the entrance count for a page is how many sessions started there. Every session has exactly one entrance.
Entrances vs pageviews
Pageviews count every load of a page anywhere in a session; entrances count only the session-opening loads. So a navigation hub viewed in the middle of many visits can have high pageviews but few entrances, while a campaign landing page can have high entrances relative to its pageviews. Reading entrances next to bounce/engagement and exit rate shows whether a doorway converts attention into a deeper visit.
- Entrance: first pageview of a session (the landing page)
- Pageview: any load, anywhere in the session
- Pair with engagement and exit to judge a landing page
How it appears in analytics and logs
A high entrance count means a page is a common first touch — often from search or campaigns. Reviewing its engagement and exit behavior reveals whether that first impression keeps people on site.
Diagnostic use case
Use entrances to identify true landing pages and to measure first-impression performance, distinct from a page's total pageviews.
What WebmasterID can help detect
WebmasterID records ordered first-party page_view events, so entrance counts and landing-page roles are derived without third-party cookies.
Common mistakes
- Confusing entrances with total pageviews.
- Assuming the most-viewed page is the top landing page.
- Reading entrances without the engagement of that landing page.
Privacy and accuracy notes
Entrances are derived from the ordering of pageviews within sessions, not from personal identity. No identifiers are required.
Related pages
- Exit rate vs bounce rate
Exit rate is the percentage of pageviews of a page that were the last pageview in their session — the point where visitors left the site. It is often confused with bounce rate, but they answer different questions: bounce is about single-interaction sessions, while exit is about where any session ended. A high exit rate matters most on pages that are not meant to be endpoints.
- Pageviews: what the metric counts
A pageview is recorded when a page is loaded (or a virtual page is rendered in a single-page app). It is the oldest web-analytics metric and the easiest to misread: pageviews count loads, not people, and modern apps and prefetching can inflate or hide them. This page defines the metric and its caveats.
- Sessions: what a session is and when it resets
A session is a group of interactions from one visitor within a bounded time window. It starts on the first event and ends after a period of inactivity (commonly 30 minutes, configurable). The reset rules differ by tool — and historically Universal Analytics also restarted sessions at midnight and on a new campaign — so the same traffic produces different session counts in different products.
- Campaign links
Attribute landing-page entrances to campaigns.
Sources and verification notes
Last reviewed 2026-06-24. Facts are checked against primary/official sources where available; uncertain specifics are marked “Data not yet verified” rather than guessed.