Daily Research News Online no. 6561 - comScore Traffic Analysis Moving with Times

comScore Traffic Analysis Moving with Times

March 15 2007

Internet audience measurement provider, comScore Media Metrix, has designed a new set of metrics to measure the frequency with which a person views web content. The launch of 'visits' comes as reliance on page view stats declines among Internet properties and advertisers.

'Visits' tracks the number of times each unique person accesses content within a web site, with breaks of at least 30 minutes between access � it includes total visits, average minutes per visit, average visits per visitor, and average visits per day.

Commenting on the enhanced tool, Executive VP of comScore Media Metrix, Jack Flanagan says: 'As technologies like AJAX change the Internet landscape, certain measures of engagement, such as page views, are diminishing in significance for many web properties. The introduction of these new metrics based on 'visits' provides an alternative for measuring user engagement that tells us how frequently visitors are actually returning to the site to view more content.' His remarks echo comments from senior figures at Yahoo! last month, on the decline of the 'page view' as a standalone measure of site activity.

Flanagan goes on to explain that while each of the 'visits' metrics offers a different measure of frequency, the 'average visits per visitor' best illustrates the number of return visits per unique individual. Used alongside the 'unique visitors' metric, he says that this measure can help provide a more comprehensive view of a site's performance.

The firm supplies monthly analysis of online US consumer activity. Figures for February include rankings across areas such as:

Search engine sites � Yahoo! Sites ranked as the top web property by unique visitors (128.6 million), compared with Time Warner Network which was second and Google Sites third with 117.9m and 114.7m unique visitors respectively
Valentine cards � American Greetings ranked number one with 11.2 million, followed by Hallmark with 8.6 million and FTD.com with 3.7 million unique visits.
Travel sites � Carnival Cruise Lines led the field with 2.4 million visitors, with Princess.com behind at 1.1 million visitors and HollandAmerica next in line with 737,000 unique visitors.

comScore Media Metrix is a division of comScore Networks, online at www.comscore.com .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.