Chris Anders - Internet Strategy Consultant

The "pages / visit" statistic available from the dashboard of Google Analytics refers to the average number of pages viewed by each visitor to your website over a given period.

This figure is useful as it provides an indication of how engaging your website is.  The value may differ substantially depending upon the type of website you are operating.  For example web pages found via organic searches that fully answer a question are likely to have a lower value than other sites that are more geared up towards online browsing or shopping.

For most websites however, the statistic can prove a useful indicator of how engaging your site is over time.  Strategies that increase this number suggest growing visitor retention on your site and vice versa.  

The best way to assess whether your site is performing better or worse than average is to use the Google Analytics benchmarking tools to compare your site's performance to similar sites within your industry sector.