NONE: Re: Hot 100
Re: Hot 100
Ted Resnick (tedres_at_mckinley.com)
Wed, 26 Jun 1996 11:42:25 +0100
At 11:26 PM -0600 6/25/96, Cliff Kurtzman wrote:
>There is a story in the June 24 issue of Inter_at_ctive Week that talks about
>a site called 100Hot that ranks the 100 most popular web destinations based
>on number of page reqests. The site also ranks application type and server
>software. The site is operated by a company called Web 21.
>
>The URL is http://www.100hot.com/. I took a look at it -- it is
>interesting but leaves more questions unanswered than answered. They are,
>to put it mildly, extremely vague in their description of methodology of
>measuring site traffic. They state that sites are ranked "objectively"
>using "surveys, logs and traffic samples", but little else.
>
>I suspect that their listings are incomplete. I run sites that I think
>could at least have the potential for making the top 100 in terms of
>traffic in their category, but they are not on the list and we have never
>been contacted to provide any data for these sites. I wonder how many
>other sites they did not contact, how they deal with sites that won't
>disclose information, and what steps have they taken to assure they are
>being provided accurate and consistent data from the sites that they do
>list.
>
>I would be interested to know if anyone on our list provides data to 100Hot
>and can tell us about the process or provide further insight into what they
>are really measuring in their index.
I am excerpting part of an article that appeared in Electronic Engineering
Times which explained a bit of their methodology. This information was not
available on their web pages.
>> Bert Fornacieri, president and chief executive officer of Web 21,
>> until a year ago had been vice president and general manager of
>> SGI's Customer Support Division. He said that Web 21 chooses, at
>> random, 30,000 Web surfers and tracks which sites they visit.
>>
>> Fornacieri maintained that the surfers' privacy is protected:"We
>> know nothing about them except where they're coming from." The
>> company tries to pick a balance of home and business users, as well
>> as frequent and infrequent users.
>>
>> Although the companies on the 100hot list do not share their hit
>> information with Web 21, Web 21 does call a few of them at random to
>> determine whether their estimates of traffic match the actual
>> numbers.
There is also an article about the Web21 that appeared in the San Francisco
Chronicle last Saturday about them. I am sure that it had similiar
information to the Inter_at_ctive Week article. You can find a copy of that
story at
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/chronicle/article.cgi?BU9108.DTL:/chronicle/archiv
e/1996/06/22
I do not know how they chose the 30,000 random surfers, and what incentives
those users were given. (I saw no notices for websurfers for this project
anywhere online.) Nonetheless, I assume that it is easier to track web
surfing than it is to track a Nielson household watching TV.
I must say that we were disappointed to see that Magellan was not even
listed until sometime last month, however, we have been steadily rising on
the list and are now listed at number 25 overall.
To my knowledge, no one has been contacted within our company about
confirming traffic reports, so while we are pleased to report our status,
it is seems to be based on their own information sources. As we do not
have access to other sites traffic numbers, it is impossible to say how
accurate their counts are.
I will leave it up to others to speculate and/or provide additional details
on their credibility. I am planning to use their statistics on select
collateral materials, so if anyone else has details, I would be extremely
interested as well.
Regards,
Ted
-------------------------------------------------
Ted Resnick
tedres_at_mckinley.com
Online Communications Specialist
The McKinley Group -- http://www.mckinley.com/
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