Our readers had several suggestions on how to prove traffic to potential ad buyers. Their posts are in response to a previous article we published related to this topic. Reader Comments On Article: Peter Faber ( Scottsdale, Arizona): "I wonder why there was no mentioning of PageRank in that thread. Would PageRank be a good measure of the amount of visitors a page gets? PR is number that describes the chance that a random surfer will visit a page. The "chance" that a random visitor will visit a page. The thing with mathematics is that it generally is correct. Also it is the case that if you would want to describe the surfing behaviour of all internet surfers you pretty much end up with no specific patterns, which means they are random,.. :) So the average behaviour of all internet surfers is like that of a random surfer. PageRank describes the chance that the random surfer visits a page which indicates an almost direct relation with the number of visitors a page gets. Were talking about a chance which means there are examples of this relation not being correct. But PR is about the average and not about the few examples that are different. Examples of less visitors are compensated by examples of much more traffic. But on average, PR is right on. I think that if you would auction advertising on pages without the concept of PageRank known and people would have to go on all other factors, you would end up with a price distribution that matches the way PageRank is distributed. In other words: Expensive pages would be the ones that also have the high PR. Even with PR being used as a guideline for determining the value of adspace in a page, there are still differences. Some low PR pages still are expensive simply because more people like to buy a link from it and other high PR pages get lower values because theyre not that much wanted. The laws of supply and demand do their work here too. In my opinion, PageRank is the best way to determine the value of a page, but it is very important for any advertiser to look at more than just PageRank. The first thing to look at is if the visitors to the page(s) you want to advertise in match the profile of the visitors that you want. Also the basic checks as described in the previous post and a simple reputation check on the owner of the website should be standard procedure while searching for advertising space. A trusted third party like a text link broker can perform these checks for you, but PageRank definitely is a great way to determine the dollar value of advertising space in a page." Meridian (Colorado): "VisitorTrack provides deep insight into "individual website visitors". Rather than typical log file analysis applications that are effective at evaluating website patterns and activity in bulk, VisitorTrack is designed to deliver visibility into each separate visitor. This data is captured live from the visitor's web browser, vs. analysis of logs. The client gets business intelligence such as: Visiting organization name Address Search Engine vs Direct Hit Search phrase/keywords Frequency Phone/fax Key Executive contacts Employees Sales Figures/revenues SIC industry and other features such as e-mail capabilities, and prospecting functions. Typically, VisitorTrack is designed as a business to business product. It offers tracking of website visitors, and is used for sales, marketing, an lead generation purposes. (I am with the company that has developed and markets VisitorTrack) MikeSzyszka (Woodstock, NY): "Try SiteMeter. It's free but will supply anybody with your sites stats if they click on the counter. See Kendall Simmons (Lawrence, KS): ""I understand your hypothesis: PR has "an almost direct relation with the number of visitors a page gets". I do not understand on what you base your basic assumption: "PageRank describes the chance that the random surfer visits a page..." Yes, you describe 'chance' in relation to the randomness of surfing, but that has nothing to do with any correlation to PR nor do you offer any data that shows such a correlation. And without such evidence, your entire conclusion falls apart. While people may or may not think that it's *possible* that "PageRank describes the chance that the random surfer visits a page which indicates an almost direct relation with the number of visitors a page gets", without supporting data this is just a guess on your part. I, for one, don't believe that PR describes the chance that a random surfer will visit a page and doubt you will find corroborating evidence that it does. Nor do I believe that PR has an almost direct relationship with the number of visitors a site receives. I could be wrong, but without data my guess is as good as yours :-)"" xmx (Switzerland): "I also use Sitemeter on some webpages. I started using it years ago and it is really a good service that provides many data and has many pros. I know there are many other counter services available on the net but sitemeter is one of the best I tested." "That's how I solved the problem of showing to my clients the results of my SEO work: I use a really handy service, http://www.websitetrafficreport.com/default.asp. They send me daily reports by email from where I can link to their site and use my password to choose among a number of different types of reports (5) or even download statistics. To inform my clients how their site is doing, I open the day's Long Report page, with various breakdown options (by requested page, by referring site, by entry page, etc.) venividi (Italy): From the entry page option I press on the drill down button against one of the urls I am monitoring and I am displayed a detailed list of all the visitors to that url. Details include the referring page url, so if it is a SE, you can open the search page and see how you and your competitors are doing. This list can be emailed to the clients and they can see by themselves. There are other feaatures, too long to explain. Go and see. I am really satisfied with WSTR ... and my clients too. The premium service cost is also very interesting: 120 dollars a year. Very little compared to what I can get. PS. No, I don't get any commission from them :-) " "I have only Linux servers and for such cases I use Cron job in combination with Webalizer stats. Well, I prefer Awstats, because of their accuracy, but Webalizer is easy to deal with. activeco: Make a new directory in "www", say "webalizer". Make a cronjob like this, in any time interval you like: cp tmp/webalizer/*.* www/webalizer I assume webalizer's data are located in "tmp/webalizer", mostly they are. That's it. Your new public stats are here: http://(www.)domain.name/webalizer" Murdok | Breaking eBusiness News Your source for investigative ebusiness reporting and breaking news.
Proving Site Traffic To Advertisers: Readers Have Their Say
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