The Evolution of Metrics & Analytics

In a report published today, comScore went into further detail into its earlier announcement that MySpace had passed Yahoo in terms of page views for the 2006 calendar year. In reviewing the numbers, the statistics firm admitted that due to the progressive nature of Web 2.0 technology, analytical methods for determining site traffic would need to be updated in 2007. Did Yahoo as the web's most visited site? It depends on who you ask, and how you measure the traffic. If you look at the sheer volume of page views, MySpace comes out on top. The battle for unique visitors, however, still gives the edge to Yahoo. According to the highly popular web portal, the decrease in page views is attributed to the implementation of AJAX into the site's features, decreasing the number of pages a user would need to navigate in order to access various types of content. The debate rages on win the online community as well. Catherine Holahan at BetaNews seconds comScore's notion that the standard for gauging analytics must change: Yahoo's unique visitor count has not declined, despite reports that MySpace had "dethroned" Yahoo. That fact is leading to an amplification of a months-old debate over whether a "page view" - essentially, the transmission of content in response to an HTTP request with a single URL - is no longer an adequate metric for judging relative readership. In revised home pages, such as Yahoo's which uses Asynchronous JavaScript (AJAX), users can change the content of portions of the interior of the page without forcing a refresh, thus reducing consumed bandwidth and improving efficiency. "The Internet experience today is much more dynamic thanks to Web 2.0 technologies like AJAX," says Dr. Magid Abraham, President and CEO of Hitwise follow suit? With so much advertising revenue depending on these types of figures, the need to develop a system of analytics that delivers a higher degree of accuracy is paramount. Clicks and page views are pass. Elements such as unique visitors, time spent on the site, and other contextually relevant standards of measurement must be considered when determining the overall popularity and actual value of a web property. As the methods of delivering content change, so must the methods of measuring the consumption rate of that content change as well. Add to Del.icio.us | Digg | Reddit | Furl Joe is a staff writer for latest ebusiness news