The Debate Over Counting Traffic on the Web

by Leonard Brody | December 3, 2006 at 04:29 pm

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This doesn't even begin to scratch the surface on this issue. The whole area of web metrics is broken. You can have 10 different services tell you 10 different numbers. And please...don't even get me started on Alexa. If I had my choice, we would pull NowPublic off of it immediately...more to come on this issue.

For 55 years the couch potato has belonged to Nielsen Media Research, the company that meticulously catalogs TV viewing habits for the benefit of advertisers that want to sell suds to the spuds. But now couch potatoes are waddling to their computers to consume entertainment onlineâand in Cyberland, Nielsen doesn't dominate the business of counting eyeballs. "There's close to 100 companies" battling it out to become the Nielsen of the Web, says Josh James, CEO of Omniture, one of the top Internet-measurement firms. "We see competitors all over the place."