Nielsen changes the way it measures web traffic

Filed under: Internet, News, Google, AOL

Nielsen changes the way it measures web traffic

by Brad Linder Jul 10th 2007

One of the largest companies tracking web traffic is changing its measuring stick. The Associated Press reports that Nielsen/NetRatings will replace page views with time spent on a website as its primary tool for measuring traffic.

Folks have known for a while now that page views don't really tell you what's happening with your site. For example, some of the most visited sites on the internet are search engines. But visitors pop in and out quickly, as they use the tools to find the sites they're really looking for. On the other hand, Web 2.0 sites like Facebook, MySpace, or YouTube can offer up loads of content without a single page refresh.

Nielsen will still track page views, but will rank sites based on the new metric.

The move means that Google will drop from the 3rd most popular site on the internet to the 5th, while this blog's parent company moves from 6th place to first. Why the big jump? Because the minutes users spend on AOL Instant Messenger get included in the new rankings, meaning that Americans spent 25 billion minutes using AOL in May, according to the latest Nielsen rankings.

Tags: netratings, nielsen, page views, PageViews, web traffic, WebTraffic

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Ian Smith said 2:49PM on 7-10-2007

I think this is a good change, although it is still hard to measure value and popularity of websites. I use both AIM and MSN but I don't consider that use to be either page views or time spent using the service. On the other hand, when I type in google.com and do I search I'm aware that I'm using their service to solve a problem. Same goes for web mail, Yahoo Answers, and craigslist.

zkam said 5:25PM on 7-10-2007

So if I open a page (say Yahoo), and leave it open all day in a background tab in Firefox (i.e. it's not actually the active tab), does that count?

orig_club_soda said 5:26PM on 7-10-2007

This is silly. Google is so good it takes 30 seconds to find what I am looking for. Length of the visit hardly compares with unique visitors.

Cyclotron said 3:31AM on 7-11-2007

THis is silly. Google is so good it only takes 30 seconds to find what I am looking for. Unique visitors is more important.

ahoier said 10:03AM on 7-11-2007

pardon the "newbie" question, but how does Nielson get this data/information? Or do these corporations send their data to Neilson say, every quarter or whatever? Looking at the source for google.com just now, there's no external links that point to anything other than other google products.

But yea, this is interesting, almost as if AIM is "gaming the system" per se :P The way the AIM traffic is included in their...

And, what if I have the AIM ads blocked? Ar.atwola.com, pr.atwola.com, and some others...:P

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