Someday I’ll give up web analytics and move on to something real like pottery or something, but until then I’ll keep fighting the good fight to get news orgs to stop using monthly unique visitors as an indicator of success.
It’s tempting, I know, to count UVs because the number of monthly subscribers is the standard for print, and the number of people Nielsen says watched a program is the standard for TV.
But technology has made everything different. Strategy is more important than ever, and understanding audiences, not just counting them, is essential.
UVs are counted by counting the number of cookies, or computers,
that go to a site. This means UVs are always significantly overcounted
or undercounted.
If one person uses three computers, it’s counted as
three unique visitors.
Conversely, a number of people going to one computer – for example, at a school or library – means that UVs will be undercounted.
Neil Mason, a web analytics guru who does some pretty thorough research for his clients, noted in a recent ClickZ column that UVs are usually overcounted.
(So that’s the reason why news orgs use total UVs – would they use this number if it were consistently undercounted? Don’t think so…)
Mason notes that while the UV metric is “particularly important for those sites that are dependent on advertising revenues as a major source of
income,” it “must always be treated with caution and never taken at face
value.”
Believe me, it’s rare to hear a web analytics expert use the word “never.”
The advice from the ever-pragmatic Mason: “A trend is a friend.” Analyzing significant increases or decreases over time will give news orgs the information needed to build audiences.
(Trends are indeed friends, but don’t even think about using counts of Facebook friends and Twitter followers!)
News Numbers 