This is so so so so so on the money!
David Jaxon has a new post up that summarizes a very important article about how useless pageviews are as a metric. I've long held that pageviews are completely useless for almost all real analysis and this article explains (with data) why that's true. Please read it if you are optimizing anything.
He also has some great links up at the bottom of his post. Just reading through those will give you a much better understanding of how you should be thinking about pageviews.
Also see:
- David Jaxon's post on Vanity Metrics (here).
- Morgan Brown's post on the things he learned researching the world's fastest growing startups (here). In particular, see "Lesson 8".
- (Added 02/03/2015) Also see TheInformation's Jessica Lessin's excellent post (warning, pay-wall) "Is Time the New Click Bait".