I embarked upon my study of online competitive intelligence tools in late June of 2009. My muse for this project was a study by SEOmoz comparing the website analytics of 25 Internet marketing blogs with estimates made by intelligence tools such as Compete Site Profile and Alex Site Information. SEOmoz’s conclusion was that:

Based on the evidence we’ve gathered here, it’s safe to say that no external metric, traffic prediction service or ranking system available on the web today provides any accuracy when compared with real numbers.

I found the study exciting, but the results surprising and somewhat counterintuitive. Because research thrills me, I began pondering ways I could replicate their results with a larger and more diverse sample. I immediately saw an opportunity in a relative newcomer to the competitive intelligence industry: Quantcast.

Competitive Intelligence

Companies such as Quantcast that offer web analytics, competitive intelligence, and/or market research services generally gather information from one or more of  sources:

• Panels of Internet users
• Aggregate ISP data
• On-site direct measurement

Each of these methods has strengths and weaknesses. The current trend in the world of competitive intelligence is  to eschew relying on a single data source. Instead, companies are choosing to integrate two or more. Hypothetically, this allows them to compensate for the weaknesses of a single method.

Quantcast

Quantcast could be considered the pioneer of direct measurement in the competitive intelligence industry. Quantcast even compensates for the major weakness of direct measurement by employing cookie corrected audience data, taking into account …numerous factors including the frequency of visitation and the respective balance between work and home access to build a translation of cookies to people that is unique to each digital media property.

The Study

I began this study with the assumption that directly measured traffic data from Quantified websites are 100% accurate. I now know that reaching 100% accuracy with web analytics is virtually impossible. However, it is likely that a metric such as page views, which is not dependent on tracking cookies or JavaScript is as close to canon as is possible under current technological constraints.

Under this assumption, I have compared Quantcast’s direct measurements of websites to monthly traffic estimates given by services such as Alexa, Compete, and Google Ad Planner. Since June, I have conducted several pretests using smaller samples, culminating in the current analysis of more than 1,350 root domains. My correlations have remained fairly consistent regardless of sample size and month of data collection.

Further Exploration

I have gathered data on my sample from many other sources including search engines, social media services, and miscellaneous third-party tools. These additional variables give insight into the factors that mediate intelligence tool estimates. They also present the opportunity to conduct future analyses by identifying the factors that correlate with website traffic and user engagement.

I will be posting the results of my research this month, mediated only by the pace at which I can write about and display them. I strongly encourage you to leave questions and requests as comments on this post. I will make sure to address them in my analyses.

Special Thanks

I would like to thank Aaron Prebluda of Compete.com, and Danny Dover of SEOmoz for their support and patience. I truly appreciate your aid and advocacy. I am confident that you will find it was well worth your time.

How You Can Help

Interested in contributing to this study? I would greatly appreciate your taking my survey on the topic. It should take you less than a minute to complete. Make sure to send this post to your friends too. Thanks!

Related Posts:

• Website Traffic – Are Competitive Intelligence Tools Accurate? (Survey)
• Twitter’s “Link Click Count” Provides Analytics, Revenue, & 503 Errors
• Competitive Intelligence Tools – Alexa, Compete, Google Trends & Quantcast

Researching the Validity of Online Competitive Intelligence Tools – Introduction

was brought to you by WellonTop Internet Research

Based on my review of the literature, the most often cited tools for estimating website traffic are:

• Alexa Site Information
• Compete Site Profile
• comScore Media Matrix
• Google Ad Planner
• Hitwise Competitive Intelligence
• Nielsen NetRatings
• Quantcast Planner

If you are familiar with at least one of these tools, I would love to have your input. The survey below is very short; essentially one question. If you donate just one minute of your time to fill it out, I will greatly appreciate it and promise that you will receive a copy of the results.

I would like to collect a couple of hundred responses in order to report statistically significant results. If you know someone who might be interested in the topic, please point them in this direction. The easiest way to help is by simply retweeting this post, or sharing it your favorite social network.

Take the Survey

Related Posts:

• Competitive Intelligence Tools – Alexa, Compete, Google Trends & Quantcast
• Researching the Validity of Online Competitive Intelligence Tools – Introduction
• Twitter’s “Link Click Count” Provides Analytics, Revenue, & 503 Errors

Website Traffic – Are Competitive Intelligence Tools Accurate? (Survey)

was brought to you by WellonTop Internet Research

If you click an outbound link on Twitter.com and immediately hit stop, your browser’s address bar will display something something similar to:

http://twitter.com/link_click_count?url=http%3A%2F%2Fsu.pr%2F1VF3eU&linkType=web&tweetId=3822962256&userId=17594917&authenticity_token=fa92ae1a3b002f6051a9f8d304cef09e0095ee09

If you allow this link to continue loading, you will be redirected to the URL on which you clicked via a 0.1 second meta refresh.

Let’s take a look at what information Twitter is collecting.

http://twitter.com/link_click_count

It appears fairly obvious that Twitter’s aim is to count clicks on outbound links.

url=http%3A%2F%2Fsu.pr%2F1VF3eU

If you’re not familiar with URL encoding, don’t let the messy-looking characters scare you. This is the equivalent of http://su.pr/1VF3eU

linkType=web

Refers to where the link was clicked. At this time, it appears that Twitter is only tracking links on Twitter.com. The existence of this parameter seems to be evidence that they are considering expanding beyond that.

tweetId=3822962256

A unique number assigned to every Tweet. Combining this number with the username of its Tweeter will display the status update: http://twitter.com/seanwf/status/3822962256

userId=17594917

This number is used to uniquely identify each Twitter user; roughly equivalent to their username.

authenticity_token=fa92ae1a3b002f6051a9f8d304cef09e0095ee09

A unique random string value. This security measure was unfortunately exploited by the hacker behind the StalkDaily Worm fiasco.

What Does Twitter Know?

We can glean from this that Twitter now has access to a smorgasbord of information about links on Twitter.com. As it turns out, the “authenticity_token” mentioned above is actually a cookie-based string. What this means to us is that Twitter can track a user’s click-behavior over multiple accounts.

Twitter can correlate your click-behavior with all of the information related to your account including:

• Name
• Location
• Bio
• Homepage
• Following
• Followers
• Date Joined
• Time Zone
• Tweets

The same data is available about the user who shared the link with you and any users mentioned in the tweet. All data related to the Tweet containing the link is also tied to your click such as:

• Date Created
• Users Mentioned
• Application Used

Good for Twitter, Bad for Users

Personally, I have noticed that this redirection adds a noticeable lag when loading external pages. It appears that I am not the only one experiencing this unfortunate side-effect. Another negative consequence to users is that when Twitter experiences server issues, the outbound links on Twitter.com may stop working.

Twitter has yet to announce any plans to make this data available to developers. Could this be part of a larger strategy to make Twitter.com relevant despite less than 10% of the platform’s traffic passing through the website? One thing is certain. This new feature gives Twitter access to an enormous quantity of valuable information that can be used to generate revenue through their new commercial accounts.

Delving Deeper into the Data – Twitter Demographics

In my next post, we will be exploring the demographics of Twitter users through a meta-analysis of about a dozen data sets. What we learn may surprise you and challenge some assumptions about the types of people using the micro-blogging platform.

Notes

Photo curteosy of Flickr and:

Related Posts:

• Social Media for Small Business – Yoono Models Best Practices
• Researching the Validity of Online Competitive Intelligence Tools – Introduction
• 10 Reasons You MUST Attend IZEAfest 2009

Twitter’s “Link Click Count” Provides Analytics, Revenue, & 503 Errors

was brought to you by WellonTop Internet Research