Technology

A Big Mistake In Internet Traffice Measurements

Stocks:  (YHOO)(MSN)(GOOG)

Someone has to be wrong. One the one hand, Nielsen/NetRatings and Comscore, and on the other the head of Topix, the large online news aggregator. A survey of web page referrals, including those coming to Topix shows that Google drives 70% of web searches at large sites. The survey relied on internet measurement tool Hitwise. Since traditional measurements from companies like Comscore put that number at 45% to 50%, the disparity in figures is bound to be troubling.

And, for Yahoo! and MSN, it could be devastating.The share for MSN using this methodology is 9%. For Yahoo! 19%.

Hat’s off to Rick Skrenta of Topix.

Henry Blodget of the Internet Outsider thinks that the news is actually bad for Google. With 70% share it may have no where to grow.

Who would rather own shares in Yahoo! if the numbers from Hitwise are right? No one.

Douglas A. McIntyre can be reached at [email protected]. He does not own securities in companies that he writes about.

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