That being said, I find web analytics to be pretty fascinating. I mean there is simply no denying that it is interesting to look at the statistics and demographics of people who are visiting your site. As Christa said, it really IS kind of exciting to see when people from different countries have stopped by. It’s also interesting to find out the analytics of various sites that I regularly use. I certainly can’t blame companies for wanting to use analytics to maximize their service and profitability.

As a consumer, I kind of like when sites like Amazon remember my preferences and make suggestions accordingly. There is a certain element of this type of technology that can be a tad frightening, but generally, I like taking advantage of programs like that, and I think it’s pretty incredible that we even have these capabilities.

Ryan hits it on the head, the web wasn’t designed to track users, and for most people that’s encouraging. The old fashioned method used by the Nielsen people will not work long term since it cannot follow the power distribution method Clay Shirky talks about in “Here Comes Everybody.” (that a small percent of users will account for the majority of participation in special interest sites, skewing any “random sampling” or hit counting.

And I also agree with Jen’s comparison with an annoying younger brother. I guess I, and I think a lot of other people who don’t understand the technology behind the internet very well, just kind of assume that everything I do can be (and probably is being) tracked by someone somewhere. And this doesn’t really bother me, mainly because I don’t have much of a realistic conception of how that information could be used (and who would really care that much what I’m doing).

So I appreciate being able to track things like the search terms and keywords that lead people to my site. It helps me gauge what kinds of content are effective and seems pretty unobtrusive for the readers. Because the point is to improve the product that readers are consuming, and they don’t even have to fill out a feedback form or anything.

If Google Analytics can measure the traffic to my blog, why can’t Nielsen or comScore? Also, online advertisers and website providers argue over which is more important, unique visitors or pageviews but that issue depends on what an advertiser is trying to accomplish by using the website. Is it simply to reach the greatest number of people? If so, then use unique visitors. If repeated exposure to your ad is important then look at page views. The same logic can hold true from the content provider’s point of view.

It is good that the industry seems committed to increasing the accuracy of its traffic measurement methodologies. My guess is that neither source of traffic data, the website or Nielsen and comScore have the actual traffic numbers correct. But the rankings of websites relative to one another are probably usable by advertisers in terms of judging the value of a site and pricing it relative to other purchase options.

But even though it is the most widely used method now, Kaushik shows some of the inconsistencies with the method:

“The data captured is less deep than twith other methodologies, but for tageted narrow purposes (banners, emails, and so forth), it works well.” Even though it isn’t incredibly precise, it still provides enough data to understand the types of content the reader is looking for.

In line with Bunmi said, I too am way too interested in seeing who is viewing my blog, how long they are viewing it for, and where they are viewing it from.

Despite the Internet being characterized as an anonymous medium, it is becoming more transparent with programs like these.

ps Canada loves Chicago sports.

Like Adam, I can’t really pick out which would be the best method, some of it seems too complicated. I’m sticking to being a writer/journalist too … leave the Web management to my IT boys (and girls).

It kind of seemed like a combination of them would be the best. I mean, a lot of them had some really great benefits, I thought. It seemed like if it was good for one thing, it wasn’t good from an advertising standpoint, or not from a marketing standpoint.

The best tool would be one that is able to combine the benefits of all the currently tracking methods so that it’s benefitial on all levels, and not just one or the other.

Also, I’m not sure it matters. I understand, as “The State of the News Media” explains, that it’s important to have one standard way to track audience usage, whether it’s by unique visitors, time spent on a page, number of pages visited, etc. However, the Internet has proved itself to be capable of incredibly fast change and innovation. For every counter that is designed, there’ll be a site like Yahoo! Finance that uses Ajax and makes a certain measure useless.

It makes sense that advertisers want concrete numbers when it comes to the Internet, as opposed to print ads in newspapers in magazines. The data is possible to obtain, after all. Also, there are fewer newspapers: in 2000, there were about 1,500 newspapers in the country, and all came with quantifiable data: circulation. There are who-knows-how-many more websites. Advertisers wouldn’t want to take a chance advertising on most of them, unless they have proof that the website reaches a sizable chunk of their target audience.

I also hate red light cameras, banner ads and web beacons.

So, I do my best to avoid them. I use the Adblock Plus (https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/1865) Firefox extension to prevent banner ads from loading, and I only allow specific web sites to set cookies. (By default browsers allow most anybody to set cookies.)

It’s not DoucleClick’s (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DoubleClick) business where I go on the web. My actions on the Internet should be anonymous, unless I decide otherwise.

(Also, I don’t have a discount card, and I’ve never had to pay extra. Just ask. They’ll swipe one for you. But it looks like I’ll have to run for mayor to get rid of those cameras…)