Interesting Stats on directory sites

[Copperhead]

This site provides interesting stats on websites - found the directory sites information very interesting and I am still compiling the data.
The link goes directly to the b&b.com info but you can also do searches on the others. www.quantcast.com/bedandbreakfast.com#traffic

 

[Morticia]

I guess I'm curious, and yet scared to know, how they got the demographics? How the heck do you know someone is Caucasian from the web?
Interesting that folks who search on bandb.com are also highly likely to search on nfl scores. Hmmm...

 

[Copperhead]

What I think they are doing - and I am not claiming to be an expert here, is that they look at the geographical data and then use basic stats on demographics to determine things like race. Demographics on salaries are done filtering out the fact that since most of these search results are done using home based computers (~75%) that they would fall in the upper catagories, so after filterering that out they get the results.
I was also interested in the list of other 'related' sites that were likely visited. The list (sequence mainly) was different for each of the 4 directories that I plugged in.
Also to note, this site has a quantifing process which lanier or bbonline have done so the results are rough estimates.

 

[swirt]

I guess I'm curious, and yet scared to know, how they got the demographics? How the heck do you know someone is Caucasian from the web?
Interesting that folks who search on bandb.com are also highly likely to search on nfl scores. Hmmm....

A little light reading will tell you how
http://www.quantcast.com/docs/display/info/Next+page4

 

[Morticia]

I guess I'm curious, and yet scared to know, how they got the demographics? How the heck do you know someone is Caucasian from the web?
Interesting that folks who search on bandb.com are also highly likely to search on nfl scores. Hmmm....

A little light reading will tell you how
http://www.quantcast.com/docs/display/info/Next+page4
.

Given the blatant sarcasm in that wink, I'm assuming this is a link to a tech journal of some sort...

 

[swirt]

I guess I'm curious, and yet scared to know, how they got the demographics? How the heck do you know someone is Caucasian from the web?
Interesting that folks who search on bandb.com are also highly likely to search on nfl scores. Hmmm....

A little light reading will tell you how
http://www.quantcast.com/docs/display/info/Next+page4
.

Given the blatant sarcasm in that wink, I'm assuming this is a link to a tech journal of some sort...
.

Lets just say that Quantcast likes to use bigger words than they need to in order to describe what they do.

 

[JBanczak]

We've highly encouraged all sites to get "Quantified" so that people can see a clear, unbiased, third party tracking system that helps people see the real volume of traffic they are generating. To their credit, iloveinns adopted it, but to my knowledge none of the other directories have done so.
Swirt - you probably know this better than me - but it used to be that the conventional wisdom was that Quantcast under-reported your traffic if you were not quantified. Thus there seemed to be some benefit to get accurate information out there. Any comments on this?
It appears that this was not the case for iloveinns - if I recall correctly, old reports I had for them before quantified showed them above 100k monthly people, but now that they are quantified - it is showing them lower than that.

 

[swirt]

We've highly encouraged all sites to get "Quantified" so that people can see a clear, unbiased, third party tracking system that helps people see the real volume of traffic they are generating. To their credit, iloveinns adopted it, but to my knowledge none of the other directories have done so.
Swirt - you probably know this better than me - but it used to be that the conventional wisdom was that Quantcast under-reported your traffic if you were not quantified. Thus there seemed to be some benefit to get accurate information out there. Any comments on this?
It appears that this was not the case for iloveinns - if I recall correctly, old reports I had for them before quantified showed them above 100k monthly people, but now that they are quantified - it is showing them lower than that..

Swirt - you probably know this better than me - but it used to be that the conventional wisdom was that Quantcast under-reported your traffic if you were not quantified. Thus there seemed to be some benefit to get accurate information out there. Any comments on this?

Afraid I don't have much to say on it. I haven't made a study of before and after. I can see the arguement for why it would estimate less...but if they tweaked the estimates to match they collected data, I can also see where those numbers could get closer or even be higher than reality.

 

[JBanczak]

Actually - I found the answer... it looks like the real impact was lowering the quantified estimates so that they are more in-line with the non-quantified. They basically trimmed their cookie estimates. Definitely makes it more of an apples-to-apples approach then, so I guess I'll quit badgering the other sites to get quantified!
From the Quantcast Website:
My position in Quantcast's Media Planner tool has changed - reported audience counts have decreased and resulted in a lower ranking. Why is this?
Prior to June 23rd, 2008, quantified publisher traffic counts in our Quantcast Media Planner tool were cookie-based.Non-quantified publishers had, and continue to have, people-based traffic estimates reported. In order to provide the marketplace with the best possible evaluation tool for understanding audiences, we have migrated all quantified publisher traffic counts to a people-based default. As our Cookie Corrected Audience White Paper explains, cookie counts typically overestimate the actual number of people visiting a web property. Primarily for these reasons, your traffic counts and ranks have changed. It is important to note that our new estimates are more comprehensive, and representative of actual people-based data. This should help you in your ad sales, and revenue generation activities.