DISQUS

Max Kalehoff · 3 years ago

Matt,
There's another trend going on that seems to spawn many misleading memes: the growing popularity of free, amateur measurement tools. I'm talking tools like Alexa and Google Trends, among others. They're interesting, fun, illustrative and sometimes offer good directional insights. Combine their lack of rigour with amateur analysts (like a lot of talkative bloggers) and you wind up with a ton of analyses that are misguided (albeit some good ones, too).

Cheers,
Max Kalehoff of Nielsen BuzzMetrics
(the guy who you went sailing with on Bounty, which used to be my home)

Andy · 3 years ago

I think you're combining two different issues. One problem is getting accurate information from third parties (Alexa, Hitwise, Comscore, etc.) about traffic to specific sites. This is because these third parties are at best making calculations and estimates based on a fraction of the traffic. Only the site owners, who can deploy a variety of analytics tools, can get particularly accurate data - and often they're not willing to share this raw info.

The Google problem of click fraud is something totally different. Click fraud isn't an issue of incorrect statistics - the clicks are happening, the question is if they are being made by valid visitors or not.

I think you get can pretty accurate stats about your own site, it's getting accurate stats about other sites that's next to impossible - and you're right that there doesn't seem to be any good solutions coming down the pipe.

Bryan · 3 years ago

It's tough to even get accurate stats about your *own* site. Ever see a company switch from a log-based metrics tool to tag-based one? Reported traffic can be cut in half - or much worse.

I've had to talk clients thought that change. It's not easy explaining why 2/3 of their traffic never really existed.

Matt Marshall · 3 years ago

Sure, internally you may have a better idea of real stats (although even there stats are not perfect), but part of my point is that a lot of buzz, and money can be made from the uncertainty out on the part of outsiders and advertisers (yes, on two different issues, traffic and click-fraud).

Sarah · 3 years ago

Matt - great post and some interesting commentary here.

Just a courtesy message to let you know I linked your post here:

http://wetjello.com/blog/2006/08/comscore-stats-indicate-increasing.html

at the Wetjello blog which covers anything and everything associated with online video.

Comments are welcome and encouraged!

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