Usually I try to stay pretty neutral on articles or posts of interest that deal with analytics since my company Lookery is in the business of audience analytics.
This morning I was reading my feeds and saw this post by Duncan of the Inquisitor. Since his blog does have a high volume of traffic and it will be read (the above post), I feel that I can’t let Duncan make his blanket defacto statements.
For one thing, as written by David Cancel the Lookery CTO, Quantcast – just where do they get their numbers or their data? Give that post a quick read, it’s to the point.
That begs me to ask the question of what really was being said by his prediction of the Quantcast will rule in 2009 over Compete, since if you read the post by Duncan he says:
There are two provisos with Quantcast’s data: In my experience it does tend to under-report data slightly (around 10-20%), and for sites not using direct measurement, the data can be very hit and miss, but no more so than data from Compete or Alexa.
But prior to that he stated:
Quantcast gives The Inquisitr just shy of 1 million people a month with 723,000 US, Compete gives us 291,000.
The real issue here appears to be the lower amount of traffic that Compete is showing vs what Quantcast is reporting. That begs me to ask – What is the real truth to his last statement below?
As the momentum builds and more and more sites join, Quantcast will rock 2009. We are seeing the rise of a true Alexa killer at last.
Alexa killer? Compete killed Alexa a long long time ago. So there is really nothing new here, as Alexa has been proclaimed “dead, stick a fork in it!” by more than one prominent blog. Is the above stating that he actually believes Alexa data still? Or is he saying that just because Alexa was never fully put to rest officially, that Quantcast is going to kill Alexa? Which of course can’t happen since Alexa is already dead!
The best one that represents how dead Alexa already is, is this humorous video done by Allen Stern of CN.
There is no denying that Quantcast has a huge following, but back to David’s post – How biased is the data they display for public consumption?
One of the more interesting facts about Compete is that everyone uses their graphs now to compare traffic over Alexa or Quantcast. Even the graphic from above is from Compete.com. Most blogs use Compete when they illustrate traffic trends; ie – TechCrunch, CenterNetworks, RWW, etc… Rarely do you see Quantcast being mentioned as where they sourced the data from or use the graphic to display as the source.
One thing I do know, the data we have been displaying about your audience on Lookery is all based on empirical data. We don’t guess about who your audience is. That would be biased, or to be quite blunt – misleading and stupid!
In all fairness, Quantcast does have a big presence in the analytics world. I can’t argue that fact, but what I am saying is that I believe while Quantcast will have a good year in 2009, I can’t agree that they will rock past Compete in 2009.
Also, in all fairness, I have again reached out to Duncan to give Lookery a try to see more about his audience. I feel that my company Lookery offers a very unique perspective into your site audience, and doing it via non-guessing or bias being attached to the data we present.
Technically Speaking, not trying to start a war or anything like that, but wanted more out there about what was already posted earlier today. Just want people to think about the statement that was already made about Quantcast passing up Compete in 2009.
The below full disclaimer will seem like I’m writing about the above post with total bias. I just want to make sure any bias that I have is properly addressed. If you agree or disagree, you can leave a comment or better yet – write your own blog post in response.
Full Disclaimer: Rex Dixon is a co-founder and works at Lookery, and David Cancel is the CTO of Lookery as well as the co-founder and ex-CTO of Compete.com
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