.: On Tokyo Time :.

I’ve written about the metrics companies quite a bit recently (see So ComScore Understands the Page View Problem? and Page Views Are Already Dead!. And comScore is getting a beating again. Today Techcrunch reports on new conflicting data between the two metrics companies Hitwise and comScore:

[Hitwise's] data is saying that this week, for the first time, Google Blogsearch surpassed Technorati in total visits.

(…) Comscore tells a much different story, and one that makes little sense given the facts.

As mentioned before, comScore skews towards “regular” consumers (rather than more advanced users/geeks). So Technorati has less geeky users? Hard to believe…

And Hitwise, what’s up with that 0.0023% vs. 0.0025% of total internet traffic? There must be a better way to represent these numbers! You know, one that looks less ridiculous.

The ‘best of’ and ‘top 10 of’ 2006 are cropping up everywhere. And I like it! At least until I get tired of it. The Best of Copyblogger will become the reference for every aspiring blogger. And while reading Top 10 Read/WriteWeb Posts for 2006 I couldn’t resist keeping score (number of titles containing the given term):

• Firefox: 2
• Google: 2
• Yahoo!: 2
• Search: 1
• Web 2.0: 1

Yahoo! ties Google and Firefox! And Ajax, YouTube and MySpace are nowhere to be found…

Performancing has managed to position itself as a valuable resource for bloggers offering advice on their blog, a blogger Firefox extension, and even a blog advertisement network. Now Techcrunch reports that they’re selling out to PayPerPost, a service that has received plenty of negative press and comments from bloggers recently.

I stopped reading the Performancing blog a while ago as it was too focussed on pro-bloggers. Some advice seemed to be more concerned about making money then adding value for the reader. So is the sell out really that much of a surprise?

And one comment for TechCrunch: We all know that you get exclusives. But why do you have to rub it in with “They will be announcing … tomorrow”? Or am I overly sensitive?

Good luck to Performancing! You have a good reputation to lose.

Update 1/5/07: Looks like the deal is off: Metrics goes Open Source - PayPerPost Deal is Off

While I was watching a friend typing a URL into a browser I realized that I never type the ‘www.’. Everyone has stopped typing ‘http://’ a long time ago (hopefully - stop now if you haven’t and start saving time). But I would guess that the majority is not omitting ‘www.’ yet. Now strangely enough since I realized this I keep getting stuck on sites that require the www!

So please always add a CNAME entry without the ‘www.’ to your full A name. Make is easy for your users to reach you. Thanks for making my life easier!

I guess I’m using the address bar as command line to a certain extent (F6 is my best friend). What are the search engines going to do when people stop using them for navigation?

Note: This is a DNS configuration only. No need to set up any redirects. And a client-side redirect is definitely not the right thing to do! Right comScore? Although I appreciate not getting a 404.

None of the metrics companies have made a public statement about the controversy surrounding the page view (PV) metric yet. However Fred Wilson’s comment indicates for the first time that they understand the problem and are working on a solution. Fred’s blog A VC is well read and I had no clue that he’s on the board of comScore.

He also stresses the fact that PVs should not be confused with number of ads seen:

Ajax and other more modern web technologies allow for new ads to be displayed without a page reload. Ad views can grow even as page views decline.

And he brings up another point that I haven’t really considered yet. More and more pages are integrating widgets and third party content. How should those be measured? Who should get credit for the page view? In fact comScore is probably tracking this as a full PV of the target server today if the request is triggered client-side and the response has content-type text/html. See Comscore’s Google Numbers Are Too Low for some technical details.

He wraps up with a promise:

The bottom line is a page view isn’t a page view anymore. It’s a lot more and a lot less. And we are going to come up with new measurement terms in 2007 that recognize this fact.

Google’s Adam Cutts was also joining the discussion a few days ago with his post Page view metrics? Bah, humbug!. Thanks for defending Yahoo! btw:

I want to come to Yahoo’s defense about something. A recent spate of reports says that Yahoo has been surpassed by various companies in terms of page views. Why is that relatively bogus? Because of Yahoo’s switch to AJAX for its mail.

More: Page Views Are Already Dead!

Update 12/28/06: Two more links related to Ajax and PVs: AJAX Affects Page Views (on O’Reilly Radar) and MySpace Passes Yahoo In Page Views But Not Audience (on search engine land)

Update 2 12/28/06: Fred Wilson defended comScore back in late October 06 noting that he’s an investor and board member (I must have missed that). He also points to the bias due to the panel approach that I also mentioned in Comscore’s Google Numbers Are Too Low.

Update 3 12/28/06: If comScore understands that the PV metric is obsolete and has to be replaced with something more meaningful, why is it still making the headline and first paragraph in their press release? To their credit, they’re including a comment about Ajax (but only further down):

Further, Yahoo’s increased integration of AJAX technology may have had a dampening effect on page views, as the technology enables real-time site updates without the need to refresh a page.

Yahoo! Answers is celebrating the shutdown of Google Answers claiming victory.

Personally I like the fact that Google is brave enough to make this move. Looks like they read (and understood) the Peanut butter manifesto…

And while lots of blogs are asking which Google product should be killed next, no one is doing the same for Yahoo!.

Keeping a product alive even without active development ties up resources. Getting rid of unsuccessful products or products that are not in line with the strategy makes these resources available for other projects and products.

Yahoo! announced a reorg yesterday that will lead to the sun-setting of some products and the reassignment of resources. Which products is not clear yet or at least hasn’t been communicated.

The great Seth nails it:

Ignore people like me who scream and yell about how much they love it and how much potential there is. Just kill it. That’s what fashion companies do.

This also applies to changes made to products. I’m not saying ignore the user. But a certain percentage of users will always complain because they refuse change. The grant vision for a product can be too big for some users to understand. Yahoo! TV’s relaunch received a ton of negative feedback from existing users. But what if the audience doubles in the next 6 months? Some existing users will move on while new users will like the new format. Were the changes still wrong? I trust the product team and am convinced that they’ve put a lot of thought into the changes. Let’s check the user numbers again in a few months and see who was right…

Update 28/12/06: Greg Linden agrees:

Old products never die, but they should. To innovate, it is not enough to love creation. We must also love destruction.

The Ajaxian is asking: Death of Page View Metrics? based on Steve Rubel’s prediction that the metric has four years to live.

The page view metric (PV) is already dead! Not everyone got the memo though…

Page Views (PVs) have never been a great metric (better than hits though). It is easy to architect a site to generate more PVs. Mike Davidson explains how MySpace is abusing this. And it’s also easy to game the system for example with a hidden iframe.

In fact, a higher number of PVs indicates low usability. If more PVs was better than there would be no Ajax! Remember how online maps used to work? High PV count. Compare this to how they work now with only one PV.

Steve Rubel mentions several Google products but I believe Yahoo! Mail* could actually spearhead the change. Take the largest email provider with its huge number of PVs and see the numbers drop as more and more users migrate to the beta. I believe this should be visible in the October/November numbers - see ComScore. We will see a declining number of PVs while the number of users is growing.

This is not the first time this topic comes up. evhead, Zawondy and others wrote about it before. I think the geeks understand the problem. However, it takes more time for advertisers, press and Wall Street to understand that the game has changed. I believe the transition will happen in two stages:

1. Page view metric is declared dead after losing significance over time
2. A new metric is introduced as unique users and time spent are not sufficient to measure engagement

It will be a slow transition to a better metric. I sure hope it’s not going to take four years though!

I’m surprised by the reaction (or lack thereof) of the metrics companies, mainly ComScore and NetRatings. Their entire business model is based on the page view metric (unique users and time spent are closely related). They’re only slowly starting to understand and acknowledge the problem.

The only usable metric today is unique users/visitors. But even that metric has to be taken with a grain of salt. (Don’t get me started on the accuracy of their current metrics…)

* Disclaimer: I work for Yahoo! Mail. The thoughts above are obviously mine.

Slowly but surely I’m getting sucked into the show with ze frank. I just spent $70 on three meaningless products. One is supposed to become a Christmas present (if I don’t like it too much myself).

This reminds me that I have to get a soma.fm t-shirt too. I love Groove Salad!

In related news: I finally used Amazon for the first time in my life. I’ve been on the Internet forever (over 10 years) and have used other online stores and do online banking but I was a Amazon virgin until two days ago!