BUSINESS WEEK — Oct 17 — Seth Sternberg dropped out of Stanford Business School to work full-time on instant messaging service, Meebo. Today Meebo is going gangbusters with almost a million users every day. There's just one hitch. They have a hard time proving the site is as popular as they say it is. comScore says European competitor eBuddy.com is four times as big but Alexa shows Meebo is bigger. Which is true? Probably neither. Sternberg's best guess is that the two rivals are about the same size. The dirty little secret of Silicon Valley is that no one knows exactly who is going where on the Web. Valuations for startups such as Facebook Inc. and YouTube Inc. appear to be doubling every few months, but those numbers are based on traffic figures that could be misleading. Nielsen//NetRatings and comScore recruit Web surfers to record their mouse clicks and argue that there are many reasons not to just count the clicks off a Web site's server logs. comScore points out that servers would count pop-up ads as a page view if the tracking service didn't filter them out. Alexa and Hitwise are muscling onto the scene with alternatives. Some say Alexa favors early adopters and techies and the opposite complaint is made about comScore and Nielsen//NetRatings.
The full article was originally published at Business Week, but is no longer available.
Mark Brooks: I learned about comScore and Nielsen//Netratings in September 2003 while working at FriendFinder. I bought a month of numbers from comScore for $5500 and they did a custom 'roll up' of FriendFinder properties to show that the FriendFinder network of 15 sites (at the time, now they have 20+ sites) was bigger than other online personals leaders. Nielsen were kind enough to show me their numbers to compare…and the difference was astonishing. Nielsen reported 8x less uniques. All their numbers for unique visitors were way off comScore numbers. A lot has happened in the last three years and comScore and Nielsen//Netratings have dramatically expanded their panels and extended their services, however, take a look at the left bar for the USA online personals top sites. Hitwise/comScore/Nielsen still disagree. They probably always will. It's best to make a list of what intelligence you most want, call all three services (comScore, Hitwise, Nielsen) and choose the one that delivers what you require, in a timely manner, at the best rate, …but take the intelligence with a pinch of salt. If you're going to base major business decisions on the information they feed you, have a conversation with your gut, then call around and try and find another verifying source. Some of the services offer a layer of analysis that can help you come to better conclusions. Talk to the analysts at the service you use, and ask for confidence levels in mission critical data. At the top of your 'must have' list should be source/loss info for your competitors and the keywords they're bidding on. Be prepared to sift through a lot of data to find the golden nuggets. Also, bear in mind, if you want to quote numbers or rankings in your press releases, you should be a paying subscriber to the appropriate service, or your numbers might not look good the following month 😉 Also, the press generally regard it as 'not cool' if they call up comScore/Hitwise/Nielsen to verify numbers and the analyst they talk to reveals you used the numbers without their sign off.
Dating sites that spent too much time worrying about ranking have taken their eye off the ball. Anyone in the dating industry should already know the numbers, if you have to rely on a research firm you’re not paying close enough attention to the sector.
Mark, why are you telling dating site PR people to waste analysts valuable time with phone calls every time they want to write a press release?
Dating sites would be better off hiring advisors and consultants like you and me than rely on traffic stats. I’ve never seen a site make a better decision based on any sort of ranking. The improve their business by addressing customer concerns, not adding banner ads.
Why are we not talking about blended metrics and pushing for audience measurement standards that make sense? Where is the JD Power & Associates of the website ranking world. I’ve talked about this many times.
Consumers could care less about traffic. They care about the number, quality of profiles and experience on a site. Where is that metric? It’s Keystone. For dating sites, Keystone, for all it’s faults, provides far more valuable data and analysis that Comscore, Hitwise or Nielsen.
What is the customer satisfaction rating for True, vs Yahoo or Match? Guess what, it’s low for all of them across the board, regardless of the ranking.
Dating sites that spent too much time worrying about ranking have taken their eye off the ball. Anyone in the dating industry should already know the numbers, if you have to rely on a research firm you’re not paying close enough attention to the sector.
…Huh?
Mark, why are you telling dating site PR people to waste analysts valuable time with phone calls every time they want to write a press release?
…Where did I say ‘every time you write a press release.’ If you want to use their numbers or rankings in a press release you need to give them a heads up. You’ll probably find they won’t allow you to use the numbers in a press release unless you’re a client.
Dating sites would be better off hiring advisors and consultants like you and me than rely on traffic stats.
…To what ends? We don’t have panels. I gather intelligence from many sources, including the competitive intelligence companies. They’re not to be written off.
I’ve never seen a site make a better decision based on any sort of ranking. The improve their business by addressing customer concerns, not adding banner ads.
…Which top 20 dating sites have you seen make decisions close up?
Why are we not talking about blended metrics and pushing for audience measurement standards that make sense? Where is the JD Power & Associates of the website ranking world. I’ve talked about this many times.
…And your recommendations are what?
Consumers could care less about traffic.
…The people who read this blog care a lot about traffic. I address the needs of the internet dating exec and marketing manager here. Frequentflirters.com also.
They care about the number, quality of profiles and experience on a site.
…Users, yes, sure.
Where is that metric? It’s Keystone. For dating sites, Keystone, for all it’s faults, provides far more valuable data and analysis that Comscore, Hitwise or Nielsen.
…Another source to be considered. Like the others, bring the salt shaker.
What is the customer satisfaction rating for True, vs Yahoo or Match? Guess what, it’s low for all of them across the board, regardless of the ranking.
…Yup, the industry has their work cut out.