Comments on: IT Pro versus Google: whose site traffic figures do you trust?

By: IT Pro: your grandfather’s computer magazine? « In Front Of Your Nose: A PR blog. Of Sorts.

Thu, 30 Oct 2008 13:30:36 +0000

[...] Pro: your grandfather’s computer magazine? I’ve written before about using Google’s Ad Planner as a PR planning tool. In the original version, detailed demographic information about site visitors was only available [...]

By: Sally Whittle

Sally Whittle — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 17:34:12 +0000

Really interesting post. And as you say, particularly interesting because if, as a writer, I’m being paid per click, I’m likely to offer my wares where the traffic is. I’d rather a story be read by 10% of a 1m readership than 20% of a 30,000 readership. (and therein lies a fundamental weakness of the model, in my view)

Also, having mentioned the payment on traffic to other hacks, it seems this has actually been going on for a long time in the tech press and elsewhere – IT Week (RIP) and Computing both pay according to hits on the website, apparently. I don’t do a lot of online copy, but virtually everyone I mentioned it to had some experience of the model.

By: Guy Kewney

Guy Kewney — Thu, 24 Jul 2008 10:34:00 +0000

Steve, you’re asking for too much!

The situation with advertising claims by media is, as you so precisely say: “Nobody believing anything.” And frankly, if you do believe a word of it, you’re a sucker. Has always been so.
I once became “moderately famous” in the then Yugoslavia, quite by accident because of Personal Computer World’s manoeuvrings to improve its Audit Bureau of Circulations (ABC) figures by shipping huge numbers off into Eastern Europe. Nobody actually expected them to get read! – and of course, the fact that they were a) read and b) really popular! – meaningless, because PCW advertisers weren’t interested in YugoReaders.
But when it comes down to it, readership and circulation figures are fiction spread thickly on guesswork. Except, of course, for NewsWireless.Net where they are strictly and severely understated…

Guy Kewney

By: steveearl

steveearl — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 15:07:16 +0000

Having been embroiled in a row over circulation figures many years ago, I’m tempted to trust Google (did I just say that?). Yet I’m sure IT Pro has a good methodology for is figures and invariably the devil will be in the detail. Important thing is that this needs to be sorted out one way or the other, with clear measurement definitions, or we risk no-one believing anything.

By: Tim Anderson’s ITWriting - Tech writing blog » Web stats: do you believe Google, or the web site owner?

Tue, 22 Jul 2008 12:54:54 +0000

[...] believe Google, or the web site owner? By tim Escherman’s Andrew Smith, in technology PR, asks whose site traffic figures do you trust – Google’s (via Ad Planner), or the site [...]