How exactly are we supposed to accurately measure the popularity of Web sites?

Is it through unique visitors, page views, time spent on a site? Most likely, it will be all three of those metrics. It’s extremely important to figure out a cogent way of measuring a Web site’s popularity, especially for newspapers and other media organizations.

Understanding a Web site’s metrics is the best way to be able to convince advertisers of the worthiness of a product. You look at how many more people typically view a newspaper’s Web site every month over who actually read the print edition and its puzzling because the print edition makes so much more on ads.

A better understanding and utilization of Web metrics could help to greatly bridge that gap. It’s important for all organizations to have a strong grasp of Web metrics, make them readily available and utilizing the best metrics for their individual site.

Never ask about hits. They never were and never will be relevant. Page views might be going the way of the hit, but the debate is still up in the air. The relevance of each metric varies greatly on the architecture of a Web site. Ajax, Flash and other dynamic technologies are changing how we have to think about Web traffic.

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