Why Google Doesn't Care About Nielsen/NetRatings, But Why They Still Matter

Nielsen/NetRatings made changes to the way it ranks sites, shifting from rating by number of page views to rating by amount of time spent on a page. A lot of the online response to this announcement has dealt with how this move will really hurt Google, because most Google users do not actually spend that much time on the search engine itself. However, here's a contrarian view of the situation.

Too many people get caught up in the ratings game, and don't focus on the true measures of success. Satisfying the customer should always be the first goal in any business and once you are on your way to achieving that, the ratings will come your way.

Google isn't ranked at the top spot in the Nielsen/NetRatings ratings, and there is absolutely no reason why the site should care. Google is successful for one reason; because it brings the best (i.e. most accurate/relevant) search results to its end users and displays them in an easy to use and uncluttered interface. As long as they can provide a higher value proposition for the users, their rank doesn't really matter.

We have discussed Compete's Attention Metrics before and think that with new web technologies that continue to make page views irrelevant, ranking based on attention (i.e. time spent on a site) does hold a lot of merit, but doesn't necessarily apply to all kinds of sites.

While this new metric will definitely help some sites, like YouTube, it will have to force other sites to change their business models if they want to adapt. Myspace, for example, has always tried to play to the 'old' system by making their users visit a new page for every change they make to their profiles, and it will be interesting to see what steps they take to encourage users to spend more time on the site (could this be a reason for MyspaceTV?).

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francesco mapelli, July 10, 2007

I suppose there will be a lot of "loading, please wait" ajax progress bars in the next months... why should I use a different page and let the server perform some operations with the user doing nothing while I can just use AJAX and - raise the average time my user spend on the page - give my user more time to look at the ads (since he's waiting for the request to be served)

Ramkarthik, July 10, 2007

When I went and pinged my blog on Technorati manually, this site came up in pop-up asking me whether I can take a survey. I clicked on yes. First they asked my age and when I entered 17, it said "I don't qualify for the survey". I wonder what they were asking next.

Ciaran, July 11, 2007

You're absolutely right - this will potentially hurt sites which sell advertising based on traffic, especially those using the CPM model.

Google sells on clicks, not views - so it is of absolutely no importance what so ever. And seeing as barely an article about the internet is published which doesn't mention Google, they don't even need the PR of being named the most popular site.

You could even argue that any ratings system that doesn't rank Google highly enough will suffer in terms of credibility, as most people know that they use Google an awful lot, and may not believe stats which suggest otherwise.

HMTKSteve, July 11, 2007

"Myspace, for example, has always tried to play to the 'old' system by making their users visit a new page for every change they make to their profiles, and it will be interesting to see what steps they take to encourage users to spend more time on the site "

That statement makes no sense. A person going to a different page will not negatively affect a metric based on time spent on site!

Not all sites care about how long you are there for, it depends on the site.

Reasons for being a site for a long time:

Watcing a video
Opening multiple tabs at once
Reading a long article
Looking at images

Webmasters already track their bounce rate (which is a more important metric) to see if people are coming to look or just leaving.

What does it really say about a shopping site if someone spends 10 minutes there but does not buy anything? A well run shopping site would have you in and out in as short a time as possible.

The only people who care about this sort of thing are those that are selling something.

airline, September 4, 2007