Nielsen and Net Rankings: Still Not Getting It

Posted by Cyndy Aleo-Carreira on July 14th, 2007

Nielsen/NetRatings announced this week that they were going to change the way they rank web sites, moving from prioritizing page views in determining sites' popularity to "total minutes" and "total sessions."

What was immediately clear from the announcement and the initial coverage is that the Powers That Be in the web popularity game are still not getting it, and neither are the media outlets, many of whom are probably buying ads based on this antiquated system.

Forbes references "increasingly using a software trick called Ajax to improve the user experience." Ajax is a trick? I suppose that makes Flash "hocus pocus" and Javascript "that newfangled thing all the kids are using nowadays." Sure, Ajax is one of the things that probably reduces the number of traditional page views, but who thought that page views were ever a great metric?

The Editors Weblog takes an even more entertaining approach with its concerns over newspapers "gaming" the rankings with videos to stay on top of the rankings. Let's be honest; people are moving more and more to a tabbed approach to browsing, making the new metric even more useless than the old one. Right at this second, I have 97 tabs open in my Firefox window, some of which have been open for DAYS. I've actually accidentally joined MyBlogLog communities due to machine shut-downs and restarts using a session manager; MBL saw it as 10 visits even though it was always the same page I was saving for an article idea. I wasn't actively engaged on the site; it was just sitting there.

InformationWeek chimes in with concerns that the new system will unfairly punish sites like Google that are designed for quick use while directing popularity egoboo to gaming sites, where users might play for hours.

It's apparent fairly quickly that the system isn't moving as fast as the technology it's supposed to be ranking. I'm not sure what a better system would look like, but I know this isn't it.

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Tags: ajax, forbes, Google, InformationWeek, mybloglog, newspapers, nielsen, Nielsen/NetRatings, popularity, the Editors Weblog

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Comments

leslie	July 14th, 2007 at 10:22 am
I consider a better rating of site popularity to be site participation. If I get an email, a poll answer, a comment, a video view, a song play, or an out click from a link on my sites, it tells me people are engaged. Also, when I look at my stats, the people who DO something on the site are the most likely to return and read more. By encouraging participation, I’ve encouraged a loyal reader.

BeachBum

July 14th, 2007 at 11:19 am

I gave you a digg on this, great story. One of the stats I look at daily is how long visitors stay on my site.

If time goes down then I know not to write about that subject again. When time increases I stay on topic.

BeachBum

Cyndy Aleo-Carreira

July 14th, 2007 at 2:03 pm

Leslie, I’d tend to agree, although I know I’m a lurker on a lot of sites that I love, but just don’t feel I have something worthwhile to say.

BeachBum, to some extent, I think that session time may have something to do with it, but I really like the idea behind some of the newer apps that actually track what people are doing on your site. Ajaxian had one featured yesterday that tracks everything your users do, including mouse gestures, and I think that’s a much more telling way of looking at user experience, especially since it would ferret out the 100-tab crew like me.