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TheFatControlleR
Forum Admin
Reg'd: Fri
Posts: 6670
Loc: Megatripolis
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Clicks and time they are a'changing
The yardstick for how the popularity of websites is measured has changed, as analytics firms scramble to reflect how pages are now frequently updated piecemeal and "live" by the host, rather than loaded wholesale by users.
Nielsen Netratings, one of the top firms which make a living by telling advertisers and publishers what web users are up to, said today it will put less emphasis on page views in favour of total time spent on a site.
The new methods are more akin to how TV audiences are estimated; not by if they flick through TV channel, but if they stick around and watch it.
The system takes better account of the popularity of YouTube, Yahoo! Mail, and other Flashtastic and Ajaxmatic services. Ajax is the Java technology which makes it possible to update a page's contents without refreshing it. It's often viewed as the main technological bedrock of the more nebulous web 2.0 concept.
Nielsen rival comScore has already tackled the culture shift online in March by emphasising "visits". It says it tracks users' loyalty to web destinations, rather than page views, making it easier for advertisers to assess their value. In Nielsen's first analysis where time spent gets top billing, AOL came out on top largely thanks to the US popularity of its instant messenger.
The usefulness of page views has been waning with the rise of more varied online content. For a basic web function such a search, a comparison between Google search and Yahoo! search the metric used makes negligible difference, with Google coming out on top in page views and time spent by a fact of three.
Source: TheRegister
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 TFC
'Going to trial with a lawyer who considers your whole life-style a Crime in Progress is not a happy prospect.' - Hunter S Thompson (1937-2005)
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Zippy_Brown
regular
Reg'd: Fri
Posts: 88
Loc: /dev/null
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Very interesting article.
I have a few business sites and I have written a real time monitoring script for my sites. I can see who is on my sites, where they have come from (clicked links), what pages they have viewed (and in what order), if they have visited the site before (when and how often) and how long in seconds they spend looking at each page.
Some of my pages hold visitors for a few seconds. Although that's the idea behind a few of these, others were intended as information pages and a few seconds indicates they are not catching the visitors attention (they are boring!!).
Some of my pages keep visitors interested for 5+ minutes and when this happens, I know I have reached my goal and I don't change the page content until this figure drops.
The point here is, albeit for our own sites only, my company has been doing this for 18 months now, on a page by page basis.
I don't think page views count for much anymore. I would say the time spent on each page (compared to the intended use of that page) and the number of repeat visitors is a key indicator of a website's success.
Also, I have noticed the landing page and exit page have a clear effect on the results.
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Zippy
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djmick100
regular
Reg'd: Sat
Posts: 77
Loc: UK
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Pageviews may be dead to some but as for myself I will continue to measure my sites successes on:
a) unique visitor numbers
b) SE Rankings
c) Bookmark rate
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