Scobleizer - Latest Comments in We need better statistics…

Re: We need better statistics…

Tom lee — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 08:41:02 -0000

I've always used Hitwise and it has worked out well, still the absolute best is
Google Analytics. It takes a bit time to tweak it, but it is all worth it in the end.

Re: We need better statistics…

Neal Sumlin — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 10:13:51 -0000

Speaking seo traffic, do not consider redzee as a source of viable click through. We did a campaign with them and all the traffic never went past the first page. I think they are doing some shady stuff. We own a printing company, AREA Printing & Design http://www.areaprinting.com and we have instant online chat, none of the clicks ever requested a chat session. It was a waste of money.
printing

Re: We need better statistics…

Vik — Thu, 24 May 2007 20:07:59 -0000

Hi Robert - Take a look at Quantcast. Bunch of really smart engineers using statistics and computer science to produce really accurate, interesting results. They also have sites (including Wordress and Facebook) using their tracking Javascript code. Here's an example:

http://www.quantcast.com/fa...

Re: We need better statistics…

Chris Wilhelmi — Mon, 14 May 2007 18:57:54 -0000

I think there are three issues here that are being lumped together, and in so doing it's creating more confusion.

1. General Stats - The Alexas of the web will always be off based on their methodologies using panel or toolbar data. the only way to shore it up is to create a better system that can prevent cheating...but this isn't going to happen soon.

2. Web Analytics - Obviously in this case there are a host of competitors ranging from free to really expensive and also varying wildly in their offering. This category is the definitive source to track everything going on at your local server...but it's not going to solve the bloggers dilemma. And it's hard to get two systems to say the same number...but at the end of the day it doesn't matter since you're looking for trending and directional information for the most part.

3. Blog Analytics - I recently did a post on my blog about the complete void within the blog analytics space...since that post I've heard that Google will be releasing Measure Map, a blog specific tool that seems quite powerful and takes a step beyond the current web analytics tools out there. The measure map UI was lifted for the new version of Google Analytics and is quite slick.

Re: We need better statistics…

Mark Krupinski — Mon, 14 May 2007 10:07:00 -0000

Great Question.

I'm actually researching this now to justify a corporate initiative. I'm arguing to use a combination of the following:

Authority - based on links

Conversation Index - See Stowe Boyd's blog

Feed subscriptions - much like a conversion rate in sales

Am I nuts?

Regards,

Mark Krupinski

Re: We need better statistics…

Sumod — Mon, 14 May 2007 07:32:44 -0000

@33 Rod: the same thought ocurred to me while doing some competitive research, but guess what, you can easily game GA results too! If you can mess with Alexa (see comment 4, Chris) what prevents you from doing stuff on your own site to make the urchin script go nuts? as chris says in comment 10, you really cant trust the site's own metrics. So that option is out too...

ISPs hold probably the only data that could count. But what is their incentive?

Re: We need better statistics…

Rex Dixon — Mon, 14 May 2007 06:22:58 -0000

I've been saying this forever. I'm glad someone is now actually addressing this fact full on.

Rex

Re: We need better statistics…

rod — Mon, 14 May 2007 00:13:21 -0000

I just wanted to point readers to a suggestion I made about a month ago that pertains to Robert's timely post. In a nutshell, the suggestion is that Google allow webmasters to make public a subset of their Analytics information.

http://techfold.com/2007/04...

"Adding a “Sharing” option to Google Analytics and surfacing stats in “site:” searches (for those site owners who have elected the sharing option in their Analytics account) would do the job nicely. Let site owners control the degree of information shared, keep everything opt-in, and rock and roll. I know I’d share my high-level views & visits stats in a second. In addition to providing all of the value Alexa does, it would also add a layer of transparency to making ad-buys - something else I would appreciate."

Re: We need better statistics…

Markus — Sun, 13 May 2007 22:00:04 -0000

Companies complaining that widget views don't count as pageviews is rediculus. When is the last time syndicated content as traffic for Associated Press?

Re: We need better statistics…

Christopher Coulter — Sun, 13 May 2007 21:17:22 -0000

Ummm, Nielsen Television Index "won" this debate back in 1950. We've been there, done that.

The only 'sure way' is to pass a governmental law requiring all ISPs/Networks to give up data, and then some special commission can be appointed to filter it out. Police state spyware, but hey, accurate ratings.

Re: We need better statistics…

tomconrad — Sun, 13 May 2007 21:01:28 -0000

For those that are saying "stats are overrated" and so-forth, the sad reality for an advertising-supported site that sells its own ads is that your ranking on Comscore in particular has a HUGE impact on the likelyhood that you'll be able to close top-tier accounts. If Comscore says you don't have the traffic to handle a campaign that wants to see a million uniques then you're not going to win that business. At least for me that's why this issue is so sensitive.

Re: We need better statistics…

Paul Montgomery — Sun, 13 May 2007 20:32:44 -0000

Don't lump in Hitwise with the others. Hitwise's methodology is not based on toolbars or surveys or log books, it's raw numbers they get from deep inside ISP networks. I'd trust Hitwise far more.

Re: We need better statistics…

speakingtotalshit — Sun, 13 May 2007 20:00:06 -0000

I'm wondering why the tools can't report their usage data using something I call an AttentStream. Then the metrics tools can aggregate the results.

I wrote a big post about it here: http://www.particls.com/blo...

Re: We need better statistics…

Sam Sethi — Sun, 13 May 2007 19:13:26 -0000

Great thought provoking post Robert and some great comments too. On my own blog I use four different types of measurement but none are very useful.

1. Feedburner RSS readers stats which I hate because they significantly fluctuate daily but it does allow others to compare a variety of blogs displaying Feedburner numbers.

2.Google Analytics/SiteMeter. I use these to measure my page impressions and vistors etc. but they are not perfect as previous commentors have said above.

3. Technorati Authority: My Technorati authority is 526 and Robert yours is 5,731 - this is a good measurement but not everyone displays their authority number.

4.Conversational Index is my personal favourite measurement. Being a blog it should be a "naked" conversation and Stowe Boyd recently talked about measuring the number of comments/posts. On my site my Conversational Index is around 4.8

I guess on this blog it would be nearer 30+ Of course the CI number is self-published and if it was to become an industry measurement then it would need to be trusted/audited

I guess for most bloggers publishing their Technorati Authority or CI number would be sufficient but for a few bloggers wanting to monetise their traffic with advertising then right now the only metric advertisers find interesting is page impressions to measure CPM.

Re: We need better statistics…

Adam — Sun, 13 May 2007 18:33:09 -0000

Personally, I think stats are way overrated. Don't get me wrong... I love Google Analytics (well, the new version; I was using StatCounter previously for accessible daily stats-viewing). But I think that our entire industry worries way too much about public accountability.

Are pageviews important? For advertisers, yes. But why is the public pre-disclosure necessary? If it's pageview-based, why not this:

1) Website posts their own metrics (they're likely to know better than 3rd party services anyway!).
2) Impressed advertiser goes, wow, 2 million pageviews a week! Great, we'll pay you $x for 2 million pageviews/week. If pageviews are reduced by more than 100,000, then we can get out of our contract with no penalties AND you'll owe us $y/CPM for the shortage.

Otherwise, aren't RESULTS more important? What's the quality of the mail service like? How many sales is the company making? How many new subscribers are they getting to their for-pay newsletter?

With ajax'd pages, the pageview and raw traffic numbers are, IMHO, simply a stupid metric in many cases. We need to get off an obsession with false quantifications ("Gimme numbers, any numbers!!!!!!1") and start caring more about the quality of the user experience, the power of the brand, the conversions, and so on.

Sorry, Hitwise. Sorry Compete. I just don't find your public stats to be all that useful in the overall scheme of things... even if they were 100% "accurate."

Re: We need better statistics…

Vishal — Sun, 13 May 2007 17:49:47 -0000

Hi Robert,

Excellent post, we also do metrics for digital media consumption, its not for websites or blogs, but for digital media (music, movies, books, television shows) which is consumed by people all around the world. There are no metrics for this and we provide this information to music labels, movie studios , publishers, advertisers for effective marketing, syndication and other purposes. It is interesting to see how the metrics demands and requirements are so different from the traditional approaches.

Anyways check out our website at http://divinitymetrics.com

Cheers,

Vishal

Re: We need better statistics…

Allen Stern — Sun, 13 May 2007 17:43:21 -0000

I love metrics since I was a public auditor back in the early 90s. I remember beta testing Webtrends I and thinking the same thing then that I do now about how the stats just ain't right.

I started this InteractionMetrics web site because as Patricia points out, ajax and other non-loading technologies hurt stats bad.

If you are interested in joining me, www.interactionmetrics.com - there is nothing there yet but a wiki platform but my hope is that we can create a real standard for metrics just as we have for HTML, for Microformats, for lots of other technologies. I hear people moan that the large agencies won't go with anything new. I say hogwash and believe the agencies will go with whatever is presented.

You have to remember, and it's probably not wise for me to say this but many want to keep it the way it is. If we change, their ability to generate revenue from the current may decrease.

Re: We need better statistics…

Dave Z — Sun, 13 May 2007 16:44:01 -0000

Obviously Google has a pretty good idea of where people are going, and many sites rely on Google Analytics to track their stats. Perhaps Google can combine those two sources (Adsense, too?) into some sort of stats index on an opt-in basis.

Re: We need better statistics…

AndyBeard — Sun, 13 May 2007 16:38:46 -0000

Robert Mac users are always saying that there isn't a toolbar for them, but they can always use the Search Status plugin with Firefox.

It is actually fairly useful

Also if one 3rd party developer can create a suitable toolbar, orthers could as well, focusing on providing different data, or functions.

Re: We need better statistics…

Kosso — Sun, 13 May 2007 16:24:25 -0000

I couldn't agree more.

These sites only give a representation of the 'hitshare' for the user sample that is those users with the required tool installed.

It's not too far from how TV stations say how many people are watching their shows. They use incredibly small samples (in the thousands - see in the uk: BARB ) using special boxes in their living rooms, where they are required to tap in which channel they are watching.

Our whole TV scheduling and commissioning efforts are based on these ridiculously low samples.

It's a similar problem with podcasts, where there's going to be less actual listens than downloads.

But then, I bet there's plenty of people who have a TV set on and leave the room. Hmmm.

This is a really interesting discussion for the whole media industry. Whatever the medium and platform.

Re: We need better statistics…

Patricia — Sun, 13 May 2007 16:14:13 -0000

and, I'd like to add that most really good analytics should probably be a cocktail of all the analytic sites until a better solution comes out. With the direction IP convergence is going to take the web, though, I think something more general will be the standard in the future.

Re: We need better statistics…

Patricia — Sun, 13 May 2007 16:12:48 -0000

Ugh, thank you for posting something about it. The reference to stats and analytics from companies in web 2.0 drives me bananas because I know it's inaccurate. Ajax and video are only going to make it worse.

I think we should expect better analytics in the future - our CTO at StyleDiary has interesting perspective on this.

Re: We need better statistics…

Nima — Sun, 13 May 2007 14:37:37 -0000

I think each person has their own metrics that they find important to them, which is what makes it very difficult to create more general stats. For example, you're using comments as a metric, but it looks like Wil Wheaton of Star Trek fame gets a lot more comments than you do. Should he be ranked higher? What about John Gruber of Daringfireball, who doesn't even allow comments on his site? How should he be ranked?

Here's how all fair in Alexa.

That's how I would expect the rankings to be, btw.

Or what about outbound links? Should a blogger be penalized for not doing as many links as another? Kottke just has a running list of links, and mostly of general interest and humor, so I wouldn't be surprised if he was generating more outbound traffic than you.

I don't think we're ever going to find a set of stats that are going to be truly satisfactory for everyone. Maybe we wise up and stop relying on ranking to determine our worth.

Or maybe we should just have a swimsuit competition to settle the whole thing.

Whichever. :)

Re: We need better statistics…

Robert Scoble — Sun, 13 May 2007 14:05:10 -0000

Tyler: good point, which is why I interviewed the Compete folks lately. http://scobleizer.com/2007/...

I still find that their stats are unsatisfying, though, and don't show engagement enough. Look at two sites, for instance, that have lots of traffic, but one has a lot more comments and a lot more outbound link clicky behavior and they won't show that.

Re: We need better statistics…

Tyler Martin — Sun, 13 May 2007 13:51:15 -0000

FYI, Compete's data is not only taken from toolbar users as Alexa's is, they buy that data from ISPs.

I've found them to be much more accurate than Alexa/Hitwise.