I need to start this post with an important disclosure. I was on the Board of ComScore for nine years from the summer of 1999 until earlier this month. And I am still a shareholder in ComScore through the Flatiron partnerships. In no way is this post intended as a plug for ComScore. And I cannot and will not disclose any confidential information about ComScore in this post.
Now that I have that on the table, I'd like to share my impressions after a first look at Google's new Trends For Websites service. I've been involved in the web measurement market for almost ten years and we use third party measurement services every day in our job as investors in Internet companies. I've blogged about our approach (USV's) to web measurement in the past.
In my opinion, there is no service that gets third party web traffic measurement exactly right. We like to triangulate at Union Square Ventures. We use ComScore actively and believe their data is the most accurate of all the services. But it is not perfect and it is particularly weak at measuring web sites with small (sub 500k uniques) audiences. We also use Compete, Alexa, and Quantcast on almost a daily basis. And we will most certainly start using Google's Trends For Websites.
There are a lot of misconceptions about third party measurement services out there. They are on display in the comments in this Techcrunch post. People say things like "ComScore's data is not worldwide" or "Compete doesn't have good statistical algorithms." Neither statement is true. ComScore, Compete, Hitwise, and NetRatings have been around for a long time and have invested heavily in the statistical talent that is required to get a third party measurement service right. And certainly a bunch of the leading services, particularly ComScore and NetRatings have built large international panels and report international data.
Comments
1. "Google is like Alexa in that they don't report absolute numbers"
But they do, just login on your Google account and Trends for Websites wil show numbers of unique visitors. Whether these figures are accurate, is another matter.
2. The reason they don't show numbers for their own Google domains is pure policy. They partly rely on a number of third party sources, so providing figues for e.g Blogger or Picasa would be no problem at all.
Google's own explanation makes sense: “We have policy of not providing interim financial guidance, and have decided not to release Google numbers in accordance with that policy.”
As another commenter on TechCrunch puts it: "Google simply decides not to share this data with the world, probably because it would lead to an ongoing ‘Comscore effect’ on the company’s stock price."
It always amazes be the unsavviness of some tech bloggers:
"Google is like Alexa in that they don't report absolute numbers..."
Try logging in to google (the link is on top right of the trends page) to see the numbers
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