Every individual seek, scan, lookup, or update on the specified index by one query execution is counted as a use of that index and increments the corresponding counter in this view. Information is reported both for operations caused by user-submitted queries, and for operations caused by internally generated queries, such as scans for gathering statistics.
The user_updates counter indicates the level of maintenance on the index caused by insert, update, or delete operations on the underlying table or view. You can use this view to determine which indexes are used only lightly by your applications. You can also use the view to determine which indexes are incurring maintenance overhead. You may want to consider dropping indexes that incur maintenance overhead, but are not used for queries, or are only infrequently used for queries.
The counters are initialized to empty whenever the SQL Server (MSSQLSERVER) service is started. In addition, whenever a database is detached or is shut down (for example, because AUTO_CLOSE is set to ON), all rows associated with the database are removed.
When an index is used, a row is added to sys.dm_db_index_usage_stats if a row does not already exist for the index. When the row is added, its counters are initially set to zero.