Segment showing UV counts much lower than by Page Dimension in Freeform workspace

Hi @deebycf 

What you are seeing is a common issue in Adobe Analytics and it comes down to how unique visitors are handled in freeform tables compared to segments.

In a freeform table, when you place Page Name as the dimension, the unique visitors are calculated separately for each row. For example, if one person viewed both xyz:view:idcard and xyz:ss:view:idcard, they would be counted once in each row. This is why the table shows 200,000 for the first page and 100,000 for the second. Adding those together gives 300,000, but that does not represent the true combined unique visitors, because the same person may be included in both numbers.

In a segment, Adobe first applies the segment criteria and then calculates the unique visitors across all the included hits. So if a person viewed both versions of the page, they will only be counted once in the segment results. That is why the segment total is much lower than the sum you see in the freeform table.

The scope of the segment is also important. A visitor-level segment can pull in all activity for that visitor, which can sometimes inflate or distort results. For the scenario you describe, creating the segment at the hit level is generally the most accurate option. This ensures only the specific page view hits that match your criteria are included, and then unique visitors are calculated from that set.

In short, the difference is not an error. Freeform tables show row-level unique visitors, which are not additive, while segments give you a deduplicated count across both conditions.

Since I can't see your segments, I am going to make an assumption based on your wording that your segments are using Visitor scope?

This is probably your issue...

I see you said you tried HIT scope... this should be the correct scope... paired with your UV metric in your table.

When you use VISITOR scope in a segment, it pulls back ALL hits from all Visitors that have ever match a page of "xyz:view:idcard"

I don't know if you original numbers 200K and 100K are from using Visitor based segments, but it's possible that you overcounted in your first numbers....

Let's look at a sample:

Segment:

VISITOR [

    page equals "x"

]

and then this user's visits:

Visit 1

• page x
• page y
• page z

Visit 2

• page a
• page b
• page c

Using the segment above, you will get 6 PVs, 2 Vs and 1 UV; since the page x in Visit 1 matches your criteria, and now all hits for that user will be included in the data that is being returned.

Using a Hit based segment:

HIT [

    page equals "x"

]

Will return 1 PV, 1 V and 1 UV.

While my article focuses more on include/exclude logic, it does touch a bit of segment scope:

https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/perspectives/the-magic-behind-the-curtain-complex-segments

You can also watch the session I did for skill exchange last year that helps illustrate segment logic:

https://experienceleague.adobe.com/en/docs/events/the-skill-exchange-recordings/analytics/aug2024/segmentation

If you can share more info about the segments you used, we can help confirm if this is indeed a scope issue.