Instead of measuring traditional page views, Nielsen//Netratings will now measure total time spent on a website. Even though Nielsen//Netratings does already measure average time spent and average visits per visitor, it will place more emphasis on total time spent. “It is not that page views are irrelevant now, but they are a less accurate gauge of total site traffic and engagement,” said Scott Ross, director of product marketing at Nielsen//Netratings, in a Computerworld article. This makes complete sense.
I have already posted about how measuring value is one way we can use to measure online success. This extends to measuring how users are engaging with brands online, and becomes especially true for websites that are built around Web 2.0 technologies and social media content, where user experience is paramount and more often than not content is refreshed without the need for page reloads.
comScore Media Metrix, Nielsen's competitor, earlier this year also addresses the issue of website engagement and return visits instead of just page views. “The ‘average visits per visitor' is the most illustrative of return visits per unique individual during the course of a month. Used in concert with the ‘unique visitors' metric, this measure can help give a more comprehensive view of a site's performance.”
Nielsen//Netratings' new measurement system means that this information will become an important measurement for advertisers to gauge which websites are the most popular, but as Debra Aho Williamson, a senior analyst with Internet research firm EMarketer, says, this won't necessarily change which sites receive the most ad spend.
In May, AOL's network became the top Web brand, followed by Yahoo. Google, on the otherhand, ranked in fifth place. This latter statistic is because, while users frequent the Search Engine, they don't stay on the site as long as they might on AOLs. However, as Slashdot arguably points out, Google doesn't care about ratings – it cares about clicks and not website stickiness where users ignore ads.
It's important to note that, as with everything online, these are not stone-engraved rules of measurement that companies should follow. Metrics like these should instead be used in conjunction with other criteria. For many websites that still produce static content, user and traffic measurement will continue to be one important measurement. And for some sites, neither page views nor average time spent are the best way to measure site performance.
