Web Rankings Shakeup: It's About Time

Nielsen//NetRatings' focus on time spent on sites, rather than page views, amounts to a sea change—until the next best metric comes along

by Catherine Holahan

It was the statistic heard around the World Wide Web. Late in 2006, Web-traffic researcher comScore announced that News Corp.'s (NWS) MySpace social networking site had received more monthly page views than Yahoo! (YHOO), long considered the Web's most popular destination site. Suddenly, the media and blogosphere heralded an online sea change. Portals like Yahoo that pull together content from around the Web were on the way out. Social networks were in—and where both people and advertisers needed to be.

Almost as quickly, however, analysts and others began questioning the impact of the comScore (SCOR) study. Should a Web site really be judged by the number of times a user clicks on its pages? What about all the other ways to measure a site's popularity? (See BusinessWeek.com, 12/15/06, "Did MySpace Really Beat Yahoo?").

Shuffled Lineup

Nielsen//NetRatings, comScore's biggest rival in Web measurement, is weighing in. Its verdict? Page views count, but not much. On July 10, the company announced that it would focus on the amount of time spent on a site, rather than pages viewed, when discussing a Web property's ability to engage users. "Time spent is a better denominator than other things," says Scott Ross, director of product marketing at Nielsen//NetRatings.

Talk about a sea change. Using time spent on a site rather than page views rejiggers the lineup of the most popular, or engaging, Web sites from the get-go. Suddenly, the winners are sites that include instant messaging and e-mail features. In May, the top three Web brands are Time Warner's (TWX) AOL Media Network, Yahoo, and Microsoft's (MSFT) MSN/Windows Live. Those nudge aside MySpace and Google (GOOG), which after Yahoo round out the top three by total page views for May.

Even sites that don't make the top 10 by page views register when it comes to total minutes. Apple (AAPL) makes the grade owing to time spent on its iTunes Music Store. As for the Electronic Arts (ERTS) Web site, it finished at No. 8 thanks to the popularity of its free Pogo.com gaming site.

Holistic View

At stake is who gets what slice of the more than $20 billion expected to be spent in the U.S. by online advertisers this year. But first, the industry must figure out which measurement really is the best. Having such a wide range of yardsticks helps marketers better gauge the effectiveness of ads. Instead of relying predominantly on audience projections from companies such as Nielsen's parent, VNU Media Measurement & Information, Web advertisers can ask for stats as specific as how many times an individual user interacted with an ad. But at the same time, the myriad of metrics has created confusion over what advertisers should pay attention to when deciding where to spend that money (see BusinessWeek.com, 10/23/06, "Web Numbers: What's Real?").