Canadian traffic boast
Further example of how misrepresentative Media Metrix’ numbers can be:
The Canadian numbers for September were released yesterday, and as expected Canadian sites also saw a leap in traffic (of, on average, about 45 percent).
The top news sites were:
Where, you might wonder, is CANOE?
According to Media Metrix, it reaches over 25 percent of Canadians online (the second highest Canadian site — Sympatico-Lycos had a reach of 58 percent, but they have American content and are an ISP). That’s about 3.5 million Canadians.
The problem, according to the Executive Producer of CANOE, Art Chamberlain, is that Media Metrix considers CANOE a portal, not a news site…
Were it a news site, CANOE.ca would likely have been ranked number one. (The English site had 2 million unique visitors, CNN.com had 1.8 million.)
Ahh, gotta love Media Metrix, eh?
To be fair, like all statistics, the rankings are just a matter of interpretation. Problem is, advertising spending is decided on them so the spin can effect a site’s bottom line.